Louisiana Trip Part 4: The French Quarter

No trip to New Orleans would be complete without a trip to the French Quarter. After a delicious breakfast of crab cake Benedict (seriously!) we once again took the long trek across the causeway to the south shore.

Our first stop on our walk about was the Southern Candymakers to get the world's best pralines. There was a huge line, and this place was tiny. We actually came in one side of the building, saw the mass of people, and went back around to the other side of the building to get into line. It moved really quickly, and in short order I was enjoying a fresh pecan praline.

I would have to say the best thing (other than restaurants) about the French Quarter is St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square. The cathedral is one of those old enormous churches that has really cool architecture and artwork inside. I also love that it's right in the middle of everything, there are shops and residences literally right around it. I didn't get any pictures (photography wasn't allowed), but it was truly a beautiful building.

Right outside of the cathedral was Jackson Square, which has a beautiful little gardened park which was apparently designed by the same guy who did Central Park in New York City. The park is an oasis of trees, flowers, and grass in the middle of a city. There was a banana tree producing fruit right there in the middle of New Orleans!

On the brick walks around Jackson Square there was all sorts of art being sold by local artists. I think my favorite pieces were of pre-Katrina images done on remains salvaged after the hurricane (anything from building doors to shutters from windows). There were also people painting and making art right there, and some of the techniques were really fascinating. There were apparently shops all along the periphery of the walkway, but I was so taken with the artwork that I completely missed them.

One of the other great things about Jackson Square, is that there are all kinds of people playing music. These are really talented musicians. There was a jazz/Dixieland type band playing that we stopped to listen to for a while. I was able to get some shots from Bea's iPhone from the steps of the cathedral.

We wandered around some more, I bought a funky dress from a vendor, and Bea found some interesting old dishes to add to her growing collection at a neat antique shop. Hunger was starting to set in, but I was also feeling kind of sluggish from all the rich food we had been having all weekend. We decided to go to the Gumbo Shop, and we each got gumbo and a salad. The gumbo was good, very different from what I had 2 days previous. The salad though, wow, the dressing was amazing. It was a pecan vinaigrette, and the fresh greens were nice too. I really just needed some kind of vegetable in my stomach.

Since this was the French Quarter, we had to go down Bourbon Street to get a large crazy drink. Cities as a whole are kind of stinky, it's one of the reasons I don't want to live in one. Bourbon Street smelled like every gross bar I had ever been in, but that's to be expected, because there is some kind of bar or porn shop every 5 feet. It was a cultural experience. There are no public drinking laws, so the objective was to find a Hand Grenade ("New Orleans' most powerful drink", according to my glass) and do some more wandering around. We went to the Tropical Isle to obtain this neon concoction, which had the decor to match the Hand Grenade; the whole place was done up in green and electric yellow. The bar. The floor. The bathroom. The "Hand Grenade Flavored Condoms" dispenser. Everything.

With my icy cold pineapple flavored drink in hand, we continued our wandering. Eventually I finished my drink, and we made it back to the street we were parked on. We made a stop at Lush to get some bath products. We also make one more trip to the candy store where I bought a box of pralines for Matt (and me).

Over all, I really liked the French Quarter. I'm a fan of people watching and wandering, and there is a lot of both to be done. The city itself is kind of surreal, like something out of the past. Most of the buildings have the really beautiful Spanish ironwork on balconies. You also discover all kinds of "secret" courtyards withing restaurants and shops, which are pleasant little shady areas that come in handy in such a hot and humid climate. I'd definitely go back, even just for the pralines.

Oak Alley: Louisiana Trip Part 3

I took a day off from blogging yesterday, Matt was gone for a couple days and came back in the morning, so I was eager to spend time with him, away from the computer.

I last left off on the Saturday afternoon of my visit: Bea and I drove off into the country to go visit a plantation. On the way we passed through cuts of lush forest, and at one point the sky had 8+ white egrets. I mention this because I forgot what dense forest looks like, and even from a highway clearing it's impressive.

We arrived at the Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie in the early afternoon. Back when it was operational, it was a sugar plantation. Now it is preserved by a historical society, the mansion (built in 1839) has been restored for tours, and the grounds are used for a variety of tourist and entertaining purposes. Around the mansion there are rows of live oaks, which are estimated to be 300 years old. These massive trees can live to be about 600 years in age. In the back of the house are some younger oaks, about 150 years old. They've figured out where the slave cabins were in the back of the property, and the historical society is in the initial stages of rebuilding those. I'd be interested to see how that turns out, and it's good they are working to acknowledge the people who were arguably the most important presence on the plantation.

The mansion itself has a pretty interesting history, and went through a handful of owners before the historical society received it. In particular, one family allowed their sons to race horses from the stables in the back of the property, to the front of the property... and the fastest way was through the house. I can't imagine this, but sometimes wealthy people are weird and do strange things. The mansion has been used in a variety of television shows and movies, such as Interview With the Vampire. I'm sure most people would recognize it, the oak trees leading up to the house is pretty memorable.

I don't have pictures from my own camera (always check to make sure you have a memory card before you go on a trip, sigh), so I'm waiting to get the pictures from Bea, who let me snap some shots on her iPhone. I hope they came out okay, it was such a pretty place. They have cabins that you can rent, and I'd love to come back and spend more time looking around.

Here are pictures!

Artsy photo of a live oak.

Waiting for the tour to begin.

The Mississippi River, flooded right up to the levee.

View of the walk up to the mansion from the 2nd floor balcony.

More live oaks.

Live oaks and the mansion (tourists for scale).

View of the plantation from on top of the levee.

Louisiana Trip: Part 2

Saturday morning Bea and I headed to the local farmers market. This was one of the nicer farmers markets I've been to, and I think we were both surprised at the variety of stuff that was there. I got a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice to enjoy as I wandered around, and I bought a couple of snacks to enjoy over the next couple days. "Theresa's Italian Cookies" was selling much more than cookies, and I ended up going home with some tasty granola and vanilla custard. Bea went home with some local free range (really really free range) eggs, and some grass fed beef. Everything looked so good, I'm glad we didn't stay too long because I would have spent all of my money.

After the farmers market we went to the "English Tea Room" in Covington for some girly tea time. This place was absolutely adorable, and also kind of quirky. Nothing pretentious about this place: there was a London black cab in the front yard, a red phone booth, and an adorable scotty dog named Nigel who was hell bent on coming inside and getting attention. We enjoyed a teacup of butternut squash soup (seasoned with pumpkin spice tea, such a good idea, I'll need to try doing that myself) with spinach and artichoke quiche, and a savory cheddar cheese scone. I got their maple creme black tea, and we had another plate of chocolate chip scones with clotted cream, preserves, and lemon curd. Of course, I had to get some thing to take home with me and I ended up buying the tea that Aubreya had, which was a loose leaf cardamom black tea. 


Next Post: Oak Alley Plantation

The Land of "Union, Justice, and Confidence" (Louisiana)

This past weekend I finally made it out to visit my friend and former roomie, Aubreya, who lives in Louisiana. The timing worked out great, we had a full four days to see the sites, shop, and eat delicious food. It was a drastic change of scenery from New Mexico, it was hot an humid, which is something I'd nearly forgotten about since moving to the southwest.

For the sake of comprehensiveness and brevity, I'm going to stretch my recollections of the trip over multiple blog posts.

It's surprising for me when I think about how much I've changed in the past 5 years when it comes to traveling. I used to dread traveling and flying alone, and I vividly recall freak out moments when things wouldn't go as planned. This time around I was delayed 3 hours (on top of my 2 hour layover), so I spent a very boring 5 hours in the Dallas Airport on my way to New Orleans, only this time I just kicked back, read a bunch of papers, and wandered around. The disappointing thing was that I ended up getting into LA late, and I ate airport food instead of something worthwhile. BUT, I eventually made it, my plane got in around 9:30pm, and I was comfortable at Aubreya's house by 11pm. We stayed up late, had a glass of wine, and caught up. Bea and I started having really interesting conversations right before she moved out last year, it was too bad we didn't get to do more of that. That always seems to happen with me and friends, I start getting close to people and then one or both of us move on to the next thing in our life and we end up in different places.

On my first morning of my visit I was awoken by Lani and Luna (the cats) pretty early, but I lazed around for a while. Lani serenaded me from the bathroom, and I finally relented after she started climbing all over me. Our plan was to get brunch before heading out across the lake, and we went to this really fabulous place in Old Mandeville called the Broken Egg Cafe. Mandeville is the super cute old town that has a lot of really interesting buildings, and the cafe was one of those places that were a local chain that didn't look or feel at all like a chain. The one in Mandeville is the original (all the others are called "Another Broken Egg"). Bea got the redfish Benedict (which I didn't try but it looked amazing), and I got the Mardi Gras omelette, which had smoked andouille sausage, peppers, crawfish, and a tomato-hollandaise sauce. I also had an enormous glass of peach sweet tea.

After breakfast (lunch?) we headed out across Lake Pontchartrain via the causeway that has the longest continuous water span in the US (but see comments for clarification). I never actually timed it, but I estimate it took us about 30 minutes to cross this thing. We had crossed it the previous night coming back from the airport, but it was dark and I couldn't see anything. It turns out you can't see much of anything even during the day because you lose sight of land pretty quickly. Bea lives on the North shore of the lake, New Orleans is on the South shore.

On the South shore we checked out an area called River Walk, which Bea hadn't been to yet. It's a mall area that also has transient shops on the upper level. One of the stalls had clothing from Greece, but they were rather expensive, and there was nowhere to try things on. We also checked out a store that was selling fruit wines, and we had a rather tasty blackberry wine. We also had a very weird tasting orange coffee wine, that smelled like coffee and tasted like orange. It was a little too freaky for either of us.

We wrapped up the day with a big delicious bowl of gumbo and some more tea at a place called Mulate's.

Natural Things

I've been trying to get outside more and enjoy the nice weather, especially after a semester of being cooped up most of the time because of teaching and classes.

It's been so dry, I've never seen a place go so long without any significant rainfall. That's to be expected I guess, but as a New Englander, I'm just not used to it yet. We got some light (very light) precipitation earlier in the week, but nothing that amounted to much. New Mexico has been in a really bad drought for several years now, and in the mountains and campgrounds you see evidence all over. Campfires and grills are forbidden, and designated areas have been blocked off by the forest service. Matt's gotten some updates on areas that will likely be closed off if it stays dry for much longer. Fire danger signs all point to either orange or red.

Still, I've always loved being in the desert and woods in dry heat. The air is wonderful, you can smell all the plants. It reminds me of the last time I was in the Black Hills, the heat drawing out the smell of the ponderosas. I get the same aroma up in the Sandias, but down in the foothills all the other plans smell amazing too. I need to get a plant guide, because I have no clue what most things are around here.

I'm happy to report some wonderful news. A couple months ago we had a roadrunner nest that failed near our apartment. The other week we noticed they were back on the nest for a second attempt and there are FOUR little babies currently hanging out. We've been able to get a good look at them, the parents are gone more often now that the eggs are hatched and the babies are getting bigger. I can't wait till they start running around, they're already adorable.

Picture taken by Matt's birding/butterfly-ing friend Joe

The Good Things in Life

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I'm happy to say that the semester is officially over, and I have no more teaching or class obligations for the next 3 months. One of the things that I always loved about college was that summer break starts so early, and now that I'm in New Mexico, I have hot weather to accompany that break so it actually feels like vacation.

Of course, I'm going to be working quite a bit between now and Aug 22, I just don't have to be up early to get to school to do anything on a hard and fast schedule. This week I'm also giving myself some lazy time, I was so stressed out for the past month or so that I'm taking it easy, at least for a couple days, to decompress. I had an absolutely fabulous weekend. On Friday afternoon I met up with some of my lady friends for happy hour at Opa!, then continued the fun times at Meghan's apartment late into the night. There's nothing like kicking back, having some drinks, playing games, and getting a little silly.

Saturday was absolutely beautiful, Matt and I went for a late morning walk in the bosque down by the nature center to enjoy the good weather. In the afternoon I did some serious shopping with Meghan and Clare. Clare has three weddings to go to this summer, so she needed to look at shoes and dresses. I picked up a few nice things for myself, enjoyed a delicious blended Boba Tea, and perused Sephora. In total, I think we spent about 5 hours shopping, which for me is highly unusual. I typically hate malls, and Saturday the place was completely packed. But, I had a great time, good company makes all the difference.

Saturday evening the cohort got together at Marble Brewery. That place is just too loud. They have good beer, but I can't even hear myself think when I'm there. They had their outdoor area open, but that still didn't alleviate any of the loudness. I think next time I'll suggest somewhere a little quieter.

On Sunday evening Clare's room mate had a cookout, because he recently got his master's degree and is now working on applying to medical school. Matt and I made a very large pitcher of lavender lemonade, which I will DEFINITELY make again. It was so refreshing and delicious. The food at the cookout was your standard hamburgers and hot dogs, but someone made some killer cupcakes that were way better than anything I've bought in recent history. There also seemed to be endless amounts of watermelon, and some deliciously hot salsa that gave me hiccups.

The weekend overflowed a bit into Monday, and I spent yesterday with Matt in the Sandia Mountains looking for birds and butterflies. We are having a horrible drought at the moment, I heard it's the worst since 1953. The state is starting to close off wilderness areas because of the fire danger. On the one hand, this is very bad because I have plans for camping and hiking, and outdoor activities are a major thing around here. On the other hand, it is getting pretty dangerous, to the point where one careless cigarette could probably result in a huge wildfire. All it would take is one stupid person to create a huge problem, so closing areas off is probably the only solution until we finally get some rain.

I am going to go in to work for a few hours this afternoon. I need to establish my summer work routine, and once again I'm going to initiate my writing schedule. I'll be traveling a lot over the next few months, so I need to get things done when I have the opportunity.

The End of Year One Approaches!

I was so thrilled to be done teaching and taking classes on Friday, that I had a major brain fart this weekend and forgot to complete part of my GIS project. However, that is now turned in, and this weekend was worth it.

Friday I got my official confirmation that I will be on a fellowship next year. That means I'm getting paid to do my own research, not teaching. It's a welcome change of pace, I have so much I want to work on and write. Once I am done with all my grading and my last final exam, I'm going to start working on projects and enjoying my newly found academic freedom. Friday evening Jim and Felisa hosted a barbecue to celebrate the end of the semester, the new fellows, and new PhD recipients. It was a really nice get together, complete with a little bit of unplanned herping.

Friday was kind of a weird day and tiring day. I had the written part of my GIS project due, and my evolution essay was also supposed to be turned in. I managed to get that all taken care of in addition to my other academic responsibilities. It was also my turn to lead the Paleoecology seminar discussion, which is always a good time. On a weird coincidence, the entire Smith lab was wearing dresses/skirts and very similar footwear (all except Ian of course). We took a group picture, because it was so bizarre, it's not like we're all the type to dress girly in dresses, and we totally didn't plan it. I think the similar outfits resulted from such a beautiful day, it was sunny and hot, perfect dress weather.

Saturday Ian had a spontaneous cookout at his place. We had grilled chicken and veggies, and I supplied the margaritas. I had been in the mood for a margarita since Thursday, Cinco de Mayo, but up until then I had been denied by work and teaching duties. Earlier in the day on Saturday I went to go check out a rental house with Meghan and Jason. I just don't think we're on the same page for what we're looking for, I LOVED the house, but it doesn't look like it'll happen. It was roomy, and had a killer back yard. Hopefully over the next few weeks more good options will come on the market. I desperately want to move out of my apartment, I'd like to be able to garden, and I'm sick of my neighborhood.

Yesterday I more or less relaxed and graded. I've been grading for almost 2 days now, and I'm almost done. I just have two homework assignments left and I'm finished. I just finished all the exams. The lecture exam went fairly well, the average was much higher this time around. The lab exam was kind of a train wreck. I have a tendency to write them for my students who pay attention, study, and do their work. The average for my lab practical was pretty sad, but over all I don't think it hurt anyone too much. I really thought I had made it reasonable. I didn't ask anything super specific, and I was forgiving and gave lots of partial credit. The essay portion went well, most people did well on that part. Some people didn't, but those were the same people who have been out to lunch pretty much all semester.

I hate making generalizations, but by a month into the semester I can usually figure out who is going to try to do well in the class and who really couldn't care less about being there. It's sad really, so many people want to go to college, and space is at a premium, and yet I have seats that are sometimes filled with people who are taking their position for granted. I'm sick of the fixation on grades and the totally lack of caring about learning. I occasionally get a batch of students who only care about how they can finesse a passing grade out of me. What they don't realize is I am willing to work with them to learn, but I'll be damned if I'm going to just spoon feed them. That's not what college, or reality, is about.

I will say, however, that over all I liked my students this semester. Many were friendly, respectful, and bright. I had a lot of bright students, but I wanted to shake the ones who were obviously smart but just not applying themselves. Then again, I too was bright and lazy, back in high school. My parents were paying out the nose for me to be at Penn State, so I knew not to waste my time once I was in college.

I'm happy to see this year go, and I'm anxious (in a good anticipation way) about the summer and the upcoming fall.