New Orleans

Jake and I had a fantastic three days, two nights in New Orleans.  Jake was going for a conference, and I got to tag along, enjoy a great city, and the company of my best friend!  It's amazing how much REFRESH you can get when you're with your husband... minus the other three little people I love most in the world... but was glad to get a little siesta from! Here's the view from our hotel room, which was on the edge of the French Quarter.

Our friend Todd gave a few great recommendations for restaurants, which we benefitted from in a huge way.  Our first night was at Galatoire's, where our meal was AMAZING with the most personable staff you've ever met.

We followed that dinner with fantastic jazz at Irvin Mayfield's.  There was this woman singing who looked like a great grandmother, and she had the entire room hanging on her every word. Captivating.

 Jake by the waterfront on the next day...

 

New Orleans is known for pralines, which it turns out we had never truly experienced prior to the moment after I took this photo, and we bought said pralines.

In case my newly scrutinizing opinion was in question, the multiple accolades decorating the front window agreed.

 One of the highlights of the entire trip was right after this photo.  It involved warm sun, jazz music drifting across the square, my hot husband, and about 30 minutes on a park bench.  It was blissful.

That evening was another fantastic experience.  We took the trolley to Uptown, both of our first times out of the French Quarter.  But we did not just TAKE the trolley.  As we were a block shy of the trolley, it took off the opposite way.  So as not to wait another 20 minutes, we started running for it.  With a full fresh cup of latte in my hands, wearing boots and skirt (me, not Jake), and with street guys whistling at the trolley lady to stop as we finally closed the gap at the next stop.  Never has an entrance onto a trolley felt so victorious.  And there was only a little foam lost in the effort.

 Uptown is full of old historic homes that were beautifully kept, and it happened to be Halloween...

 so there was the most idyllic gathering of little trick or treaters- totally a movie scene with these amazing homes as the backdrop.

After passing Loyola, Tulane, and Audubon Park, we reached the end of the trolley line, walked for six blocks, and ended up at Jacque-Imo's. This mural was inside (behind the Mardi Gras lamp) and is a really awesome depiction of the restaurant.

The dinner was delicious and continuing satisfy our love of New Orleans cuisine as we enjoyed an appetizer and salad, and then IT appeared... this entree is called "Godzilla meets Fried Green Tomatoes." Seriously. It was crab, eggplant, green tomatoes, and who knows what else with a knife stabbed through the top.  It was intense, the kind of dish for which the tables around us stopped talking in order to admire OUR dish and plan to order themselves.

 After our meal and a delightful ride back into the French Quarter came the fulfillment of the birthday card.

 I know that place is about as touristy as can be, but for good reason.  It was delish!

We took a walk down Bourbon Street for just a few blocks on our way back to the hotel, and you can only imagine what it was like on Halloween. Jake did make the comment that the outfits were more creative than he anticipated.  But those shootings did happen right there a couple of hours later. There's no way we would have been on Bourbon Street on Halloween after midnight, but it's still one of those "wow" moments when we heard the next day. 

Here was one last shot of St. Louis Cathedral on our last day.  I laid down on the steps to take it because I wanted a cool picture, and who would notice a lady laying down in the middle of all the craziness of that town.  But a street guy on the next block asked how my picture turned out.  I told him I was pleased with the result.

 This is not the guy who noticed my picture.  This guy was just a fantastic musician on the square.

Our last meal was raw oysters on the half shell at Acme Oyster House, the very place I had my first raw oysters many years ago with Jake and his parents when we were in town for a wedding. They did not fail to satisfy!

 In and around the meals and moments captured there were precious times with my most wonderful man in the world; great nights' sleep without getting up to help any toddlers; deep, uninterrupted conversations; novel reading; sight seeing; the ability to sleep in AND run, in the sunshine no less, because I didn't need to be home before the sun was up in order to help my family; just enjoying the beautiful south, but also...

A reminder that there's a lot of lost and sad people out there and that we can't just breeze by them every single time.  That it wouldn't hurt to keep a box of granola bars, Subway gift cards, or whatever with you to give to a homeless person asking for food.  After handing out some random Nutrigrain bars in New Orleans, I was at a red light on an exit ramp the next week, by a guy with a "hungry" sign.  All I had to offer him was cheerios in baggies.  But I figured if you're truly hungry, that's not a bad option.  The guy took them gladly and said "God bless you" as the policeman behind us did a short siren for him to back away from the car.  I come back to the whole thing that fuels 418 Stitches: I happened to be born into and given my life, but that doesn't mean we can just blitz past others who were born into different situations or perhaps made some terrible mistakes along the way. The cool part is that after giving away those cheerios, the girls and I had a conversation about WHY we did it.  What a sweet thing it is as parents to be able to teach our kids about this, and not just on the holidays.  So as we enter the season in which charity giving is so easy, I'm going to start trying to get in a better habit of at the least just keeping something in the car to be able to give if we see someone with a need.  I would love my girls to grow up with reaching out practically to the needy being the norm in their lives throughout the year. Don't read this and think anything awesome about me.  We lived in LA for three years, a city with something like 70,000 homeless, and I never did this one time there. We helped out a shelter and a women's home a few times, but that's it.  And I probably saw homeless people on a daily basis there.  So there's some making up to do as we move forward.