New Orleans: First Impressions

This is my first blog post for this blog, so bear with me. I'm a little rusty, and I haven't checked this for spelling mistakes, etc. This is basically a stream-of-consciousness style recount of the first day and a half in the city.

When my sister and I arrived at the New Orleans airport, the first thing I remember saying was, “I can smell the humidity.” We were greeted with that old, musty smell that only really humid places have. It’s not a bad smell at all. If anything it evokes endearing and antique feeling, slightly cozy. After the drive from the airport to my friend Kat’s house, we went on a little walk down Magazine Street. The street itself is very similar to Newbery Street in Boston or Strøget in Copenhagen. It’s filled with mom-and-pop stores and kitchy restaurants, all with the iconic New Orleans second floor patio, many of which were brightly colored. The feeling, however, is very different. It’s tempting to look at the buildings and the street and think that they are rundown. The street was pretty bumpy and the buildings were pretty old, but the more I looked and the longer we walked the less rundown they looked. In fact, Magazine Street isn’t rundown at all. It reminded me a lot of some of the streets in Rome that I had been on. It had the same small, relaxed Southern European feel that Rome had, but the bright colors added a distinct South American or Caribbean undercurrent.

The next morning we had brunch at a restaurant called Slim Goodies, which was on the part of Magazine Street close to where Kat Lives. Magazine Street is actually significantly longer than Newberry Street and Støget, and because New Orleans has relaxed zoning laws, it’s also part residential, which makes for an interesting hodge-podge of houses and businesses. Anyway, Slim Goodies was really good! The restaurant itself is kind of hipstery, with cute polaroids of customers taped all over the bright blue walls. I ordered the Heaven, which is a pecan waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. The waffle was just filling enough to not be over powering, and the pecans added a yummy crunch to it.

Afterwards Kat’s mom, one of my two bosses (the other of whom I haven’t met yet!) gave us a driving tour of St. Charles and the Garden District. The houses in these neighborhoods are huge, and that’s an understatement. They are all incredibly old and suffered little or not damage from Katrina. Many of them, especially in the Garden District, are very narrow with extremely high ceilings. They are very Greco-roman inspired (or at least my untrained eye thinks they are) and are really just absolutely beautiful. These are also the neighborhoods where John Goodman and Sandra Bullock live, and where Tulane and Loyola Universities are.

Our next stop was the French Quarter. We spent about five minutes driving around the French Quarter before Kat’s mom actually dropped us off there. All I can say is that the place is really beautiful. It’s very charming and has a distinct old-world type feel. The Vieux Carré Commision (VCC), which is the historical preservation committee for the French Quarter (Vieux Carré means “old square” in French) must approve any new construction in the French Quarter to make sure that it is in keeping with the historical nature of the district. Because of that, the Quarter still looks as old as it did in the 1930s, when the VCC was established.

The first place that we went was the Café du Monde, which is apparently open 24 hours (although Kat says that’s not really true). We had Beignets and coffee, both of which are very New Orleans. The Café is arguably one of the most famous landmarks in the French Quarter, and as such is a definite tourist trap. The café was really impersonal because of that, I think, and the atmosphere was kind of lacking. The beignets were delicious though, but I don’t really have anything to compare them to, so we’ll see house they add up as the weeks progress. The area around the café is what used to be the open-air French Market, and it looked really cool, but I

didn’t really get to see all that much of it. The next place we went was Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street is like another animal compared to the rest of the French Quarter. It’s pretty much the heart of the tourist industry and it’s filled with bars and strip clubs and populated by drunken tourists, especially at night. We walked up and down it a couple of times taking in the whole thing. The street holds some really interesting history, as well. One of the oldest operating gay bars in the country, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, is located on the intersection of Bourbon Street and St. Phillip’s Street (which is actually the street that I live on). The day we were in the quarter the Saints, the local Football team, was playing the Seattle Seahawks in the playoffs for the Superbowl, so after we had explored the street we decided to decided to go to a bar and watch the game. The Saints lost, which made the rest of the evening kind of depressing. Overall, however, my impression of the French Quarter was interesting. I’m really excited to get in to the neighborhood and start looking around and exploring.