Having somehow slept through the tropical night with the aircon running full blast (very eco-unfriendly of me, I know) I wake up feeling refreshed. Somehow sleep after jetlag always makes me feel fresh the next day. Part of it is, I’m pumped up and ready to go.
I head for a 7am meeting with the tour manager. There’s a bunch of people milling around all of whom are on the same tour I am. The couple from yesterday are there, the guy is friendly enough but his Mrs hardly says a word. It sounds as though somebody is in the bad books today…there’s also a fairly shy and awfully young looking English chap who is polite and shakes everybody’s hand. Naturally, nobody seems to like him. The most noise is being made by a very loud Aussie girl who sounds like she’s from the bush somewhere. She is talking at a Dutch girl about the time they had last night, and Dutchie looks horrified. I don’t know why, Dutch people have never struck me as particularly conservative, but I am about to find out.
The tour guide surprises me. She’s a friendly woman of African American appearance who looks to be around mid thirties. Nothing against good people, just that the tour booklets always feature slim, impossibly good looking white people wearing those polo shirts with the tour company logo on them. The guide introduces herself and says that she is giving the “newbies” a free day because we’ve arrived a little too late to take part in today’s optional (which was a cajun cooking class) and that the riverboat ride was held last night. We are welcome though to meet in the lobby of the hotel that evening for an excursion to Bourbon Street for a dinner and a drink. Fine and dandy. I take one of the provided free city maps and decide to head out and see what there is to see in the Big Easy. Dutchie has other ideas.
She looks at the guide with the same kind of look a 5 year old gives when they’ve just been told something they are very excited about isn’t going to happen. Her bottom lip curls, and the look in those eyes is just complete betrayal. The guide in response to this look is as sympathetic as a kindergarten teacher consoling said five year old. Wanting evidence on her side, Dutchie is waving her itinerary copy around and insisting we should have been told of the change. Actually, we were. Days before I left Australia I was emailed a confirmation that contained details of a slight change. The riverboat ride and a swamp boat ride were optional and the guide could decide which order to do them in. The riverboat was done first for the benefit of those who’d been travelling since LA, as the weather was due to close in later that night, and the swamp boat was cancelled. I decide to leave this slightly escalating argument and catch the famous streetcar down St Charles Avenue to the French Quarter.
It’s already warm out. The weather is sticky and the cloud cover starting to look low. The streetcar station is right on the median strip in front of the hotel. I get aboard the clunky old vehicle and deposit my fare in quarters into the machine just inside the door. This thing reminds me of one of the old Melbourne trams. My Dad loves these old vehicles, I remember visiting Melbourne as a kid and how important it was that we ride one of the old trams and not the new flashier ones. I know my Dad would be very interested if he were here now. The St Charles and Riverside streetcar lines copped flooding when Katrina hit, and were out of service for ages. They had only just reopened when they were shut down again (briefly) for the passing of Gustav, and are now open again. The ride is rougher than a Melbourne tram, the streetcars tend to jerk to a stop (or maybe it’s just the New Orleans driving style extending to the drivers of these things) and the doors snap open and shut very suddenly.
The Streetcar line ends at Canal St. I try to get a bearing on what’s nearby so I know where to pick up again for the return trip – otherwise it’s a hell of a long walk through a dodgy neighborhood. The famous Bourbon St is near deserted at almost 8am. There are still a few bars open, a handful of drunks are staggering out bewildered as if to say “shit, morning already?” Most places are either closed or cleaning up, though I do spot a few fresh faced tourists looking for breakfast like myself. I wander until I turn down another street and stumble more or less by accident onto Jackson Square. The French Quarter looks like Disneyland’s New Orleans Square only less well cared for. The buildings are a mix of French and Spanish colonial styles with the odd very Georgian British building here and there as well as some turn of the century American influence. It’s a real melting pot. Many buildings have faded paint and upper floors that are missing windows or have shutters that appear to be nailed shut. The city was founded as a trading port on the banks of the Mississippi in 1791 and has had what could be called a very colorful history.
Punctuated by piracy, storms, disease outbreaks, occupation by the Spanish and occupation by Union forces during the Civil War, this is a city that has survived everything thrown at it. Jackson Square commemorates Southern President Andrew Jackson who was considered a hero for his efforts at thwarting Mexico’s colonial desires along the Southern US coastline and the driving of the last of the Spanish occupiers out of Florida. He’s less liked by Native Americans who remember him as the man who condemned the Seminole tribe to be driven from their land in the Everglades and relocated into the desert. Nonetheless, there is a very stately looking statue of him proudly astride a rearing horse. In the old statue traditions in Europe a man had to die in battle to be remembered this way, but Americans of course don’t really go for these “old world” customs.
From Jackson Square it’s out onto Decatur St to find what I’ve been looking for. Cafe Du Monde is supposed to be the oldest continuously trading cafe in the US. Founded way back in the 1830′s, it has served French style fried doughnuts (beignets) for the whole time and also claims credit for inventing the frozen coffee drink they call “Iced Cafe Au Lait” known elsewhere in the States as a “frappacino”. I take a seat in the large outdoor courtyard and peruse the menu. It’s typical cafe fare of toast and bacon and eggs for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch etc, but the highlighted item on the menu is the combo of Beignets and Iced Cafe Au Lait. The menu even allows you to order a coffee mug or T-shirt with the cafe logo on it to take home. Again, this is America.
The waitress is a petite Asian looking girl, probably Chinese. I ask for beignets and iced cafe du monde and she says that she doesn’t understand – or at least that’s what I think she says. Her accent sounds halfway between a cajun drawl and a Chinese one and neither of us can understand the other. It’s Swahili time all over again. In desperation, I pick up the menu and point at the pictures and she nods, writes down the order and goes away. Well, the struggle is worth it. The coffee is just right for this hot climate, slightly sweet and not bitter at all. My mother would probably describe it as a “coffee slurpee” and she’s not far off the mark there. Beignets have enough icing sugar dusted on top to give Willy Wonka diabetes, and the Lonely Planet book says don’t dust it off, just bite through it. I do, and it is a treat. Light and not too oily, they remind me of the doughnuts I remember buying as a little kid from a shop at Kotara Fair. Those fresh hot doughnuts were the highlight of family shopping trips. Still, these things are heaven.
It has started to piss down rain by the time I get away from the cafe, so I go and buy an appropriate postcard for my old man (with a picture of the streetcar on it) and sit on a sheltered bench listening to an old blues musician wailing away to taped music. He’s positioned as close to the cafe as he can without being in it, obviously they won’t let him in the outdoor courtyard, so he parks near the fence and once his impromptu performance ends, passes a hat around. It quickly fills with notes and coins and I realize that with all the tourists hereabouts, this bloke probably makes a decent living. I notice there’s no post office close by, the lack of accessibility of US Postal Service offices is one of my bugbears.
The rest of my moring is spent exploring along Decatur St. Every second shop is a souvenir shop all seemingly staffed by suspiciously identical looking Chinese ladies who call out “you pay now?” whenever you get close to the counter. I imagine there might be a tunnel running along underneath these shops with a couple of twins running around…but the souvenirs are tacky, tasteless and gaudy. I’m in heaven. Here a stuffed alligator (I’m not kidding), there a book of Voodoo spells. Plastic pirate swords, playing card decks, shot glasses, the whole works. And humorous T-shirts of course. There’s the one that says “New Orleans – Est. 1791, re-established 2005″. The one I buy is a picture of a guy in a car driving into a river with a stunned look on his face and the slogan “Drove My Chevy To The Levee…but the levee was gone!” I think it’s hilarious. So do most people seeing it once, then it becomes less funny each time you see it. Many of the shirts are just old classics like “Honest to Officer God, I’m not as think as you drunk I am”. I also pick up a deck of “Famous Pirate” playing cards and a keyring. Key rings are my “thing”. With some people it’s shot glasses, beer steins for others. Mine is key rings. They’re easy to transport and make cheap souvenirs.
Lunch is a po’boy sandwich at one of the half dozen or so “authentic” restaurants around the French Quarter who make them. A “Po’Boy” is basically a French style bread roll, sliced in half lengthways and toasted with a filling of fried shrimp (prawns to us Aussies) in the middle. The first bite is a little bland, but I see there’s a bottle of Cajun style hot sauce on the table, and that really gets the party started. It peps up a dull lunch, even the couple of Buds I enjoy with the sandwich seem better after the hot sauce. Budweiser may only loosely be considered beer outside the US, but when you really want a cold one it will do. I notice there’s a small group from my tour in here having lunch. This gaggle of giggly girls is led by a girl with black curly hair who seems to be the one with the brain. They ignore me, probably not aware I’m on their tour. I only know they are on the tour because a couple of them have Contiki travel bags at their feet.
With lunch done, my next move is to find somewhere to escape the heat. The day has become blistering hot with high humidity. I wander down to the river. The Mississippi riverbank is all riverboats and tourist docks on the near side, while the far side has the industrial docks. A mile wide in places, the Mississippi is a major shipping lane-way all the way up into Missouri. I take the opportunity to continue a little tradition of my Dad’s, by standing on a jetty and spitting in the river for luck. This brings the number of rivers I’ve expectorated in to increase my good fortune to four.
A little way away is the Aquarium Of The Americas. This place looks inviting and also air conditioned and thus becomes my way of whiling away the afternoon. I pay the admission to go in, and you know, it isn’t half bad. The exhibited sea animals all come with a brief story explaining their relevance, the type of waterway life encountered by the Lewis and Clark expedition is a highlight (basically catfish, frogs and beavers) while the Amazon exhibit draws a crowd because of the Piranha tank. These little fish do have impressively large teeth, but are not otherwise very fierce looking. The aquarium staffer posted near the tank helpfully points out that the stories of them skeletonising whole cows in minutes are a myth, and that they mostly devour only other fish. Talk about ruining the mystique! Looking again, they do just look a bit like goldfish with attitude.
My browse in the aquarium is eventually done, and I trudge back to Canal St to get the streetcar to my hotel in order to prepare for the evening. In the whole 2 hours I spent in the aquarium, it has become colder and windier, conditions that remind me of when a storm is about to hit back home. Only this storm will be the mother of all storms, the leading edge of a 250 mile wide hurricane. To put that in some perspective, the average size storm is only 100 miles wide.
The streetcar winds up grinding to a halt in the middle of a roundabout halfway to my hotel. Against the advice of the driver, a few people including myself decide to get off and walk up St Charles Avenue. This is supposed to be a slightly sketchy neighborhood. I do feel like I stand out a bit, people in shabby clothes look at me suspiciously, but seem more wary of me than I am of them. One guy in old jeans and faded baseball cap starts begging. “Can you help me man? Hurricane wiped me out.” I don’t know if he means Katrina or Gustav, but I ignore him and keep moving. He follows me to the next zebra crossing, and gives up once I hurry across the road. I get back to the hotel unmolested, and with at least an hour to prepare for what should be a big night.
