New Orleans is all about the Mardi Gras and that's pretty much what you hear about it. That and Hurricane Katrina. Well, that is what we thought before we arrived and we could not have been more wrong...
Mardis Gras leaves its mark on the trees
I don't really know how to categorize this post because frankly, my trip was quite nutty (sans mardi gras), so I'll begin with our accomodation.
Bed & Breakfasts
NOLA has all the name-brand hotels but it also has plenty of cozy and beautiful bed & breakfasts. After some research, we found Avenue Inn Bed & Breakfast in the Garden District. Staying at a B&B is the best way to explore all the beautiful old mansions in NOLA and experience the friendliness of its people. We were greeted with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies at the door and settled into our lovely room shortly. Joe the innkeeper has a precious sense of humor (it became hard to tell when he was joking and when he was not), and him and his wife stock up their dining room to make sure no one goes hungry. They are not intrusive but very resourceful, the perfect hosts. Right across the B&B is the tram which will take you directly to the French Quarter
The oldest (and functioning) streetcar system in the US
No need for wedding band, there's plenty on the streets of the French Quarter.
More weddings, is NOLA the new romantic capital?
Wedding crashers on segways
Foxy Talent
A dear old friend of mine from back in my days in Rome happened to be working in New Orleans when I visited and she kindly invited me to see her at work. She is a pupeeter and is currently working on the crew of the Fantastic Mister Fox show at the Contemporary Art Center (CAC). Frankly, at the beginning when she invited me to the puppet show, I just thought "isn't that for kids?". Wrong.
Basically this show is probably the greatest puppet show on earth. Remember as children when you thought you could go inside a book and be part of the story (at least I did)? Well, this is the dream come true. You sit in the audience at the start like an ordinary puppet show, then a door appears in the big story book on stage and you eventually crawl out of the story. I don't want to give to much away because you really have to experience it to truly understand it. Basically a group of young and talented artists got together, collected cardboard boxes over a year and constructed a 3D interactive stage that takes up the whole top floor of the CAC. Each "page" is built into a set/stage and you go (crawl) into Mr. Fox's home, the village, the barn and so on. Each stage is landscaped magnificently with cardboard and planted with subtle, humorous, grown-up-inside jokes. By the end of the show, we all felt ten again. The excitement of crawling into a new scene and overcoming challenges along with Mr. Fox were one of the funnest moments of my adulthood. Believe me, this all won't sound so nutty once you've tried it.
Canoe in the Bayou
I'm going to share something that is rather foolish and private but I promise it has something to do with the Bayou. My interest in the South came to me while I was re-watching the all-time romantic chick-flick, The Notebook, on my laptop sitting in my dorm room. The scene where the dude canoes the chick (Rachel McAdams) on his boat in the swan-filled swamp was forever locked in my memory. My inner romantic yearned to be in the place that made the scene so beautiful.
Yup, that's the scene
So I googled this and that and came across Barataria Preserve. Next thing I know, my girlfriends and I are on an Avis-rented car driving down middle-of-nowhere in Louisana trying to find Bayou Barn, where our chariots (canoes) await. The barn is a bit remote and our GPS couldn't find it. So we get lost, find a couple of Southerners BBQ-ing at 8AM, ask for directions, turn left and right and voila-- Bayou Barn! Another thing worth mentioning is that when I pitched this "day trip" to my friends, we all somehow came with the mental image of being canoed in the Bayou (like when you sit in the gondolla in Venice and a handsome Italian stud sings and pedals you around). See below.
So that's what we were expecting...in the Bayou...in Louisana
Wrong again. Very very wrong. In the Bayou, YOU do the pedaling. No handsome singing Italian studs either. So we follow the canoe-delivering truck and finally arrive at the Preserve. Every cano-er is already there and we are fashionably late, like all city-dwellers. Then we do something Sex-and-the-City-esque; all four of us girls step out of the car and spray mosquito repellent fanatically over every exposed flesh. Turns out there are no bugs in the Bayou (our guide gently breaks this news to us once we joined the group). After a quick brief, everyone prepares to board their canoe (turns out we are the only four people with no canoe experience). Inspecting all the others visitor's dress code, we decide that our Prada and Marc Jacob bags should probably stay in the car, not exactly Bayou-chic. And off we go!
Reality hits: two beautiful (albeit sweaty) lonely ladies on a canoe without the singing stud
Turns out that canoing is a bit more different than kayaking and it also turns out that going to the gym doesn't really prepare you for the labor-intensive two-hour trip. The beginning of the bayou is narrow so it instantly fills up with ten or so canoes. My dear canoe-partner and I struggled at the beginning; instead of going straight towards our destination, we zig-zagged towards it.
Narrow bayou where we initially zig-zagged our way through
Then our soft-spoken guide breaks it to us that a couple hundred thousand alligators reside in the bayou. Apparently no one has been eaten by one yet, but at that moment I surely thought I would be the first. After a couple more zig-zag struggles, we finally started going straight and when we looked around, it was beautiful.
You know how happiness creeps in to your life during the oddest moments? I was on a canoe with a partner who was ready to give up on me, surrounded by couple hundred thousand alligators and had a tiny frog chillin' on my leg, but I felt blissful. When your surrounding is tranquil yet filled with vitality, the beauty of the place does something to you. Urbanization has made it so much harder to access nature but when you go out of your way to immerse in it, the reward often exceeds your expectations. If you're still wondering, I never found that scene in The Notebook but I left the bayou with a scene that was my very own.
On the Quest to Praline Bacon
On our last day, we were on the quest to find the praline bacon. It sounds too good to be true. Nutty, sweet, salty and fatty all combined into a little piece of meat, could there really be something so sinful? We heard that this little brunch place in Faubourg Marigny called Elizabeth's is this bacon's place of birth. We tram' it to the French Quarter to catch a cab, and luck would have it, there was a marathon that day. No cars allowed in the district and so we started walking (Google Map on mobile is possibly the greatest invention). Turns out no one walks in the South; but we're from the East Coast so we walk, a lot. Fauberg Marigny is a bit of an artsy district filled with street art.
Some graffiti to show NOLA's musical side
NOLA, also known as Crescent city
B got the memo to dress roses
somethings just cannot be erased
Walking among the playful street art was fun but some of the wreckage from Katrina was still present, and sobering. The walk definitely worked up our appetite and we treated our selfs to some contemporary soul food.
Hail Elizabeth! Creator of praline bacon and other edgy soul food dishes
praline bacon lived up to its expectations!
Eggs florentine with fried oysters--delicious!
If that is not enough, walk back to French Quarter and grab a beignet (a little piece of fried doughy-goodness covered in powder sugar) from the famous Cafe du Monde.
over flowing powder sugar (beignet long gone before camera was out)
beignet factory line
New Orleans turned to be quite eventful, even without mardi gras. The city is beautiful, full of culture, history and music and its people are quirky, friendly and strong. There is something inspiring about this city and is really worth a visit.
"Though we travel the world to find beauty, we must carry it with us or we find it not." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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