Flew to New Orleans last Thursday, met up with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apfelsingail for the weekend, and arrived back late on Sunday night! Overall this was a brilliant thing to do -- it was way more fun than just going to visit her at home, and now we've learned that we travel well together so there just might be other trips in the future. :)
Neither of us had been to NOLA before, and we leaned pretty hard into the tourist thing by... well, taking tours. We took a "bad bitches" historical walking tour focusing on the ladies of New Orleans, a food tour, a kayaking in the bayou tour, a street art tour that walked us around and showed us a lot of murals. We did a self-guided tour of Mardi Gras World, where some of the floats go when not in use. And we went to a fancy dinner where I tried turtle soup for the first and probably the last time -- it was good, but not incredible, and turtles are friends.
Foods I tried for the first time include: beef marmalade (yep), muffaletta, poboy sandwiches (catfish, then fried shrimp), boudin, praline, chicory coffee, beignets, king cake, deep-fried bananas foster bread pudding, gumbo, Cajun red beans & rice, Spanish potato cake, fried bologna sandwich with potato chips in it. The food tour helped a lot with getting samples of all this into my face -- I also legitimately enjoyed the talks, which mingled recipes with history and some excellent cooking tips (make your roux in quantity in the oven). I did not fall for the hazing when they took us to a hot sauce store though; no, no, my mask stayed firmly on my face while I texted friends and took their orders, and I will also be giving away the 3oz bottle of ghost pepper sauce they gave me there. So the food was a big thing overall, and, since I had pictures, I wrote 5 or 6 Yelp reviews on the plane back home. (I tried to review all the tour guides too, and doing all that writing has somewhat disincentivized me from making this post, since it feels like I wrote about everything already.)
Since it's already been a while, here are some more impressions in no particular order.
My body is being really slow to readjust to my usual workouts, after all the walking in the heat and eating crazy foods and sleeping a little funny. It's not an age thing; I remember taking a few days to recover from Belize when I was in my 20s; but it still feels a bit excessive and I wonder what I could have done to reduce the trip hangover. At any rate, I'm home again, and my squirrel (who was also travelling) is finally home again, and I tested negative for covid and should now have a few weeks of just being at home.
apfelsingail for the weekend, and arrived back late on Sunday night! Overall this was a brilliant thing to do -- it was way more fun than just going to visit her at home, and now we've learned that we travel well together so there just might be other trips in the future. :)Neither of us had been to NOLA before, and we leaned pretty hard into the tourist thing by... well, taking tours. We took a "bad bitches" historical walking tour focusing on the ladies of New Orleans, a food tour, a kayaking in the bayou tour, a street art tour that walked us around and showed us a lot of murals. We did a self-guided tour of Mardi Gras World, where some of the floats go when not in use. And we went to a fancy dinner where I tried turtle soup for the first and probably the last time -- it was good, but not incredible, and turtles are friends.
Foods I tried for the first time include: beef marmalade (yep), muffaletta, poboy sandwiches (catfish, then fried shrimp), boudin, praline, chicory coffee, beignets, king cake, deep-fried bananas foster bread pudding, gumbo, Cajun red beans & rice, Spanish potato cake, fried bologna sandwich with potato chips in it. The food tour helped a lot with getting samples of all this into my face -- I also legitimately enjoyed the talks, which mingled recipes with history and some excellent cooking tips (make your roux in quantity in the oven). I did not fall for the hazing when they took us to a hot sauce store though; no, no, my mask stayed firmly on my face while I texted friends and took their orders, and I will also be giving away the 3oz bottle of ghost pepper sauce they gave me there. So the food was a big thing overall, and, since I had pictures, I wrote 5 or 6 Yelp reviews on the plane back home. (I tried to review all the tour guides too, and doing all that writing has somewhat disincentivized me from making this post, since it feels like I wrote about everything already.)
Since it's already been a while, here are some more impressions in no particular order.
- Very few spiders: one of the first things I noticed, along with the oceanic smell of the air, is the lack of giant spiders hanging on giant webs all over town. It feels like Florida but doesn't have spiders at all like Florida, unless you get near the water when you might see a couple. Speaking of which, the bayou was lovely with its tea-colored water and adorable little crocodiles. It was the only time we got out of the city and, yeah, I would totally paddle around there again.
- Bourbon Street and jazz and shit is LOUD. After the Bad Bitches tour we were over in the French Quarter and kind of overloaded on Loud Party Vibe just by trying to walk down the middle of the street. There were brass bands out (sometimes battling from opposite sides of the street), loud clubs with doors and windows open, lots and lots of drinking and dancing in the streets, and people out dancing with snakes. I didn't mind the snakes but I minded my ears hurting. We avoided Bourbon Street after 5PM for the rest of the visit.
- The overall vibe is laid-back, and the population is diverse. We saw a lot of pro-LGBT stuff and it seemed like the place was accepting in a "whatever, you do you" kind of way, as opposed to the Northeastern "I have deconstructed the notions of gender, presentation and sexuality and determined that they have no bearing on a person's value" way. It was also diverse in styles and body types, and I appreciated the ongoing fashion show. It was really nice to be in a place where tiny tank tops and/or tube tops were not relegated only to the young, and didn't seem to carry with them either a shallow or a slutty aura. The place was just HOT and people dressed accordingly.
- Pokemon Go is good when you're walking a lot and also hanging out with a friend who plays! I finally hatched an Axew (very rare critter) and promptly named it NOLA. And we both hit the 50km mark for the week, getting us some nice rewards.
- Frenchmen Street is better than Bourbon Street in basically every way, and the Night Market where they sell art late at night was a highlight of the trip. I bought a small print of a cricket playing the cello, for my bug, and one of a grouchy mermaid for my friend Stencil. And we both bought bracelets made out of zippers.
My body is being really slow to readjust to my usual workouts, after all the walking in the heat and eating crazy foods and sleeping a little funny. It's not an age thing; I remember taking a few days to recover from Belize when I was in my 20s; but it still feels a bit excessive and I wonder what I could have done to reduce the trip hangover. At any rate, I'm home again, and my squirrel (who was also travelling) is finally home again, and I tested negative for covid and should now have a few weeks of just being at home.
