Long Day, But Fun!

The Chef

Ok, our first full day here in the Crescent City (named for the crescent shaped curve in the Mississippi River here) has come to a close. A long day it was. Kim started the day with a couple of friends at the Cooking School of New Orleans! They watched as the chef made several dishes, and explained the cultural origin/significance of each. At the end, they got to eat it! Me and the guys were sitting at the Cafe Dumonde sipping cafe au lait and munching beignets (sort of a sugar donut without the hole) in the French Quarter.

My tent was here in September of 2005. The river is
less than 200 feet off my right shoulder. 

Walking to the French Quarter, I pointed out the place I camped, and where we set up our base camp, during the Hurricane Katrina response. It was pretty cool to see all the tourists enjoying themselves. This area was not affected by the flooding at all. However, there was no power or any city services for several weeks, and all the restaurants lost all their food to spoilage. At one point, when the mayor lifted the evacuation temporarily, the owners of local businesses and restaurants came back and cleaned out their refrigerators and freezers, and placed the putrifying contents out on the sidewalks in 90 degree weather. Since there was no trash pickup, there they stayed for nearly a week until arrangements could be made to get them hauled off! Needless to say, it was a pretty stinky place!!

Beautiful old house!

After the cooking class and coffee, we got on board a bus for a guided tour of the city. It was an air conditioned bus, which was good, and we spent a couple of hours ogling the beautiful neighborhoods of New Orleans. The driver talked non-stop cramming the trip with tons of information. I thought it was great, although I did fade out a few times. He had lots of interesting little nuggets. How about this one: where does the term Dixie come from? Well it turns out that one popular theory is that some banks in Louisiana printed 10 dollar notes and included the French word dix (pronounced "deese") for ten on the back side. English speakers in the majority called the bills "dixies". Thus the land of dixie. Well, who knows what the truth is, but it's a pretty cool story. At our one stop we visited a traditional cemetery. All above ground crypts! What is pretty cool is that as family members pass away, you open up the crypt, take out the old coffin on the top shelf. Put the remains of the previously passed family member in a bag, and stow it on the bottom shelf, then in comes the newest tenant in the new coffin. Saves space, and besides, if you dig a hole around here it fills with water pretty quickly!

Family crypts.

After the tour we headed to the convention center to register. That was a bad move on my part. I thought we would be able to get it over with quickly. Well, an hour an a half later we finally got it done. What an ordeal! From there, with no time to go back to our room and freshen up, we headed straight to a reception for Rotary officers (current, incoming, and past). A glass of wine, and good conversation turned our long frustrating wait around. We linked up with four other Rotary friends and headed to dinner.

We went to a place called "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse". It is a very successful chain that originated here in New Orleans. Wow, it was the best steak dinner I have ever had in my life! I won't go into a long description, but it was truly amazing!

We finally made it back to our room and collapsed into bed at 11:00. What a day! Tonight, Kim has reserved a dinner cruise on a stern wheeler river boat. Should be fun. If Kim will provide a few pictures, I will include them in tomorrow's ramblings!




That's All!