Hidden in Plain View

New Orleans is a fun place to spend a day, or two or three. Find a parking place to leave the car that’s either in, nearby or convenient to the French Quarter, tighten the laces on your walking shoes and strike out. In a matter of minutes you’ll find yourself moving among a throng of fascinating types, most in a friendly and gregarious frame of mind. It is the oldest part of the city and every street corner, every building whether freshly painted, hung in giant ferns, drab or reeking of history is worthy of a moment’s appraisal.

Some of us go for the bookstores, others for the antique shops, and probably a majority for the food and drink. Even the smallest of restaurants could turn out to be the hight point of a day, and the number of friendly watering holes is beyond counting.

For many, afternoon and early evening is a time for meeting friends, new or old at one of those friendly watering holes. If conditions are right you will find a comfortable spot at or around a table on the patio or sidewalk and in no time at all meet four or five people straight out of John Kennedy Toole’s picaresque novel of New Orleans life and dialect, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Whatever time you end up at Café du Monde for coffee and beignets—and everyone does at some juncture of the day—you’ll find a hundred or more crowded tables dusted in powdered sugar and watched over by more waiters than anyone would have thought possible. Those not patrolling sit lined in chairs waiting for a summons and counting their tips. Don’t be surprised if one of them is a long time finding your table hidden in plain view. For this day weary reveler the best time is late at night just before paying the ransom on the car and driving the seventy miles home.

French Quarter Idyll

Not long back from two days in New Orleans, city most recently famous for Katrina, and long famous for its cooking, its jazz, Mardi Gras, French Quarter and excellent bookshops. Spent the time there with my lifelong friend, Raymond, and it was a grand two days and nights. The best of times it was, but with all that we arrived back in Baton Rouge tired and road beaten.

Large amount of walking during the New Orleans hours, but how else can you absorb the fullness of the streets with all their sounds, sights and smells? A dozen or two reasons make Raymond and I the best possible travel mates, and we are especially in tune with and about the art of book buying and collecting. That pursuit was a big part of the hours we roamed and rested. Crescent City Books is a book lover’s dream, The Librarie Bookstore, Beckham’s, Octavia Books and perhaps the best of the lot, Garden District Book Shop, where a superb collection is watched over by a friendly and helpful crew. Raymond has better control of his wallet than I do. He came home with two books to my seventeen.

There’s little need to crow and croon about the food in New Orleans, which is famously good. Any way you turn it’s easy to find good spots for local specialties like crawfish, stuffed softshell crab or red beans and rice with boudin sausage. We had it all and the very best was at Pontalba House on Jackson Square. On the way south yesterday we stopped in LaPlace for lunch at the Bully Bar and had a couple of great po-boys, crawfish and catfish.

We wandered in and out of French Quarter bars all day and night, and in the process of testing our endurance, met a few people who made the good time better. Unlikely that any of those people will ever see these words, but I’m shouting out anyway… You entertained us, assisted us, explained and smiled—Appreciation and thanks to Melanie, Jake, Michelle, Frank, Julie, Corvana and T’meeka. We brought a little of your smile back to Baton Rouge. Hats off to the Marriot Hotel for platinum-like service; you all did good.

Raymond says he’s too tired for lagniappe tonight. That’s our loss, and we’ll be looking for more later.

Top photo: A house on Chartres Street that caught my eye; in the bottom photo Raymond studies a menu in the Garden District, visualizing a Cuban sandwich.

1000 Words

Afternoon in the French Quarter, New Orleans—Tuesday, November 23, 2010