#9: Leave New Orleans, Heavy-Hearted.
The city I don’t want to forget: New Orleans. It’s Day # 30. The mileage meter says 2,648 miles traveled in one month. With an aching feeling of sadness, home sickness and a little vacationer’s remorse, I’m leaving this extended road trip for home, Washington, DC. Why? Well, the reason why all travelers and writers eventually return home. I can’t explain but, I can say in a month’s time, New Orleans has felt like home; a European home…
#8: Start A Half-Bucket List.
Dear Nay-Nay & Lou Lou (Roomies): Can we try to accomplish some of these things in New Orleans before the world ends (well mine, anyways) and I have to head back to DC? I’ve generously listed out several options and enticing, almost-too-good-to-be-true visual aids for us. What are we waiting for? 🙂 Get a piercing. Visit Jackson Square. See a movie at old movie theater this Wednesday, right? Dinner at that Mexican place, Las Panchitas. Run seven miles down…
#7: Hear All That Jazz on Frenchmen St.
Kirk, the New Orleans drummer, told me about this “Frenchman Street.” But I didn’t realize how musically influential and magical this place would really be. Turns out, it’s extraordinary. Removed from the glitzy neon lights and overrated Bourbon Street, this compact musical neighborhood is the epicenter of jazz music, nightlife and deep southern cajun culture. No over-the-top dance raging clubs. Only hole-in-the-wall dives. No half-ass singing. Only amazingly talented musicians playing for pennies on street corners. No neon…
#5: Live On St. Charles Street.
The address we always wanted… is finally ours! After 3 weeks of scoping out Craigslist, cold calling apartment guides, checking classifieds and eaves-dropping at local coffee shops (for coffee, of course :)) Sinead and I finally found and signed on a 2 -bedroom house on St. Charles Street. Yep, you heard that right. A house on the famous, beautiful, quintessential St. Charles Street. Now… it isn’t actually my place. It’s really her place. I’m just acting as part-time house hunter. Because that’s what best…
#3: Ode To Jazz And Treme.
You might want to sit down for this. It’s about my one-week crazy-filled stay in Treme, New Orleans. Yes, that same infamous neighborhood from the HBO TV series. Yes, the ethnically diverse hood of New Orleans. Yes, that same neighborhood raddled and devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but somehow still hanging on. … Slowly waking up to a jazz tune in the distance, I lay still for a minute trying to make sense of this new place. The…