New Orleans in the Summertime

More specifically--New Orleans SMELLS in the summertime!

Josh and I had a wonderful time on our vacation to New Orleans regardless of the vulgar odors that were totally pervasive. We treated ourselves to a trip for our TENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!! Can you believe that it's been 10 years?? OK, it's cliche, but so true that the time has flown by. But I digress...

All of our parents agreed to take care of our girls while we were away. Thank you!! We dropped them off in NY and flew from LaGuardia to New Orleans. Well, we intended to fly at 11am. We arrived at 9am, just to be safe, and the plane finally took off at (get ready) 9:30pm. So, our first day of vacation was spent at lovely, atmospheric LGA at Gate D10. The flight was smooth and we took a shuttle to our hotel. On the way there I spotted a cute little art gallery in the French Quarter and tucked it away in my memory (to be revisited later). We stayed at Le Pavilion. This hotel is very charming with lots of old world details like intricate moldings. It's located about 5 blocks from the French Quarter so we got lots of exercise everyday walking to and from the hotel, as well as within the Quarter.

It was hot in New Orleans. Probably very close to 100 degrees and 100% humidity everyday. But women in the South don't sweat you know...they glow...so I had no problem with the weather. Josh, on the other hand, did not enjoy the heat. We tried to ignore it and enjoyed our vacation anyway!

On Friday we took a city tour in a small minivan. Our tour guide, Ozzie, was excellent. He took us through the French Quarter, around all the areas that were affected by Hurricane Katrina, and then the Garden District. We learned a lot and really got to see how the city is still coping with recovery from the flooding and devastation from almost 2 years ago. We had dinner at Snug Harbor, a Restaurant and Jazz Bar on Frenchmen Street where Ellis Marsalis (Winton's father) played piano. On Saturday we took a Plantation Tour (starting at 8am!) at Oak Alley and Laura Plantations. The history was also really interesting, and these plantations are preserved really well. We were looking to get more details of treatment of slaves at the plantation in the 1800's, but those details were omitted in the stories we heard. It's too bad they don't include that type of information, because it seemed that everyone on our tour was hoping to hear more about the slaves. We're not getting the whole picture of life at that time if we don't learn about the slaves.

We had lunch at the Embers in the French Quarter, then rested at the hotel before our Ghost Tour later that night. Unfortunately, no ghosts showed themselves, but we heard some interesting stories. We had a late dinner at Pere Antoine, which was excellent!

Sunday was a slow day. We took a ferry from the docks to Algiers, a small island across the bay. We just wanted to explore, but there was nothing there at all. It was only residential, so we took the ferry back to the city. The heat had us plumb tuckered out by this time, so we went to the rooftop pool at our hotel and swam/napped/read the afternoon away. Later that evening we saw "Sicko" the new movie by Michael Moore. It's an excellent documentary and we highly recommend it! That was a nice way to close out our trip...we left at 10am the next morning.

Going back to the story of the art gallery that I spotted on our arrival to the city: It was called Cafe Baby. We explored a little and found the gallery again on Friday afternoon! The artist, Marc Bercier, was inside and we spoke for a long time. We loved his work, especially "Still Life With Flowers". There were many variations on this still life in different colors, but one version caught my eye and I had to have it! It is reminiscent of another painting we have by an Israeli artist named Avi Ben-Simhon. The colors and subject matter are similar. Something about both these paintings really appeal to me. Josh and I talked about it and we ended up returning to the gallery on Saturday and buying the painting. We are so happy and can't wait to get it framed.