New Orleans

This was always a lynchpin city in Chantelle’s idea for a US tour. It’s certainly one of the more evocative places to visit, based on what we see outside the US:  Voodoo, vampires, Jazz music, misty graveyards, the least shit James Bond film starring Roger Moore. You’ve no doubt seen or read something that’s left you with a distinct preconception of the place.

 
 

The street cars are a useful idiosyncrasy: clattering their way about town to a timetable that is more of a guideline than anything, apparently.  And unlike most vehicles, I do understand how these work.

They do give the impression they’ll fall over if you look at them cross-eyed, though

We stayed at the rather lovely Chimes B&B, whose hostess, Jill, made our stay in town delightful.  Both mornings we were there we spent at least an hour at breakfast, talking to her and the other guests.  I heartily recommend her house to you, should you find yourself in the area.  It’s named for the chimes on the front porches, by the way, which provide helpful guidance when you can’t navigate a simple grid structured street layout like I apparently cannot.

  

First Morning there we visited the World War Two museum, which i didn’t know was a thing to be seen here.  The exhibits and commentary are entirely from an American perspective - appropriately as it is their national museum on the subject- and illustrates the the militarisation and growth in industrialisation that transitioned the USA from it’s isolationist stance (with an army smaller than Romania’s at the time) to the interventionist superpower it became.  It also follows the stories of the citizens at the time, military and otherwise. 

  

 

As required, we visited Bourbon Street.  You smell it before you see it, as it reeks of vomit.  The bars and clubs that line it mostly have a counter facing the street, for selling cheap alcohol to pedestrians.  It’s a lurid cacophony of fizzing neon, scantily clad hostesses, lairy drunkards and blaring music.  Periodically, a wedding party will parade through, accompanied by brass bands playing “When The Saints Go Marching in”.  It is quite a singular experience. 

Apparently it smells better in morning; then it smells of vomit and bleach.

   
Pictured: the last days of Rome

As per Jill’s recommendation, we sat down in Fritzel’s European Jazz Bar, which is apparently the oldest run Jazz Club in town.  We hung around for a couple of hours, listening to the resident band.  We don’t know anything about Jazz, but we knew we liked it. 

  

Now I’ve read and consumed fantasy, horror and sci-fi in all media for as long as I can remember.  I’ve read most of the Anne Rice novels prior to her finding Jesus, and Stephen King books framed my formative years. That said, I found the evening ghost tour we did absolutely dull.  Actually, the tour itself and the various grisly stories behind various buildings were quite interesting (even though I mentally bookmarked every fantastically elaborate murder to check for embellishments on the internet later), it was all the trite ghost sightings and “And they opened his coffin and he was gone!” that do nothing for me.

Seriously, there’s 7 billion live people and 100 billion dead’uns. We should be knee deep in ectoplasm

If you are unaware of the ghost hunter vernacular, the big thing is to take plenty of flash photographs of supposedly haunted buildings and look for ‘orbs’ in the results.  These are apparently ghosts flicking in and out of the spirit world, being caught by the glare.  Oddly enough one finds these artefacts more frequently when you take pictures of glass windows.  I myself caught several spirits in the act right up to cleaning the dust off my lens.  I don’t mind people getting enthusiastic about this guff, as long as they aren’t allowed to vote afterwards.   Oh and there are actual vampires here too. Which is nice.

Chan looks thoroughly compelled

Our guide also helpfully pointed out the “real” witch's shop to go to for your readings and potions, rather than the charlatans one will find preying on the tourists.  Plainly I dodged a bullet there.

  
But does she weigh the same as a duck?

They do put a fair bit of effort into Halloween around here, appropriately:

 
 

Taking a culinary turn, the local delicacy to sample is the beignet.  It’s a square doughnut with icing sugar on top.  We tried the reportedly definitive example at Cafe du Monde.  It was alright.  I’m not sure many dough products can survive that kind of hype, though.

 

Finally, my favourite part. We had cooking lessons in the New Orleans School of Cooking with local chef Kevin Belton (coming to the Food Network next year). We were versed in the rather pragmatic philosophy of Cajun cooking, namely: use more of what you like, less of what you don’t and anything of what you have to hand. 
I now have a passing idea of how to make gumbo, jambalaya and pralines.  Yay.

 

I think Chef Kevin had it right when he said that New Orleans isn’t a tourist town, a place to see to check off your list. But it’s a place you return to again and again to just experience being here.

Kuzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben New Orleans besucht. Wir haben in einer sehr schönen Gästezimmer übernachtet und wir haben Cajun-Küche Stunden genommen.  Für die Aufzeichnung: Bourbon Street ist eine massive debauch und riecht nach Erbrochenem.

On the road again – Ft Lauderdale to Mobile, Alabama

Google Maps did say “Or you could just fucking fly, you tool”

I ‘d best get this all written down, as we’re flying to Brazil tomorrow night and the chances of me recalling the past week with any kind of accuracy after several days of flailing around Sao Paulo are dubious.

We picked up another car in Ft Lauderdale after disembarking the big boat.  It appears that Budget have fallen for the sultry siren song of favourable warrantees and generous service plans like much of the US, as we were given a Kia Sorrento, the first car to comfortably hold our luggage this trip.  Serial killers take note.  It’s the V6 version and so merrily pissed away fuel with abandon. Fortunately every state from here on in had gas prices in and around $2 per gallon.  That’s 34p per litre.  Fucksake.  (For interested American readers, UK gasoline is presently at a low of $6.41 a gallon)

It was already parked like that

We drove across the state to the Panhandle, trying to not look too hard at Disneyworld on the way through Orlando, to Monticello where we stayed at a B&B in one of the town’s historic Antebellum-type houses.  We spoke over breakfast to a very nice couple who live on the gulf coast near New Orleans, who gave us some great tips for things to see and do when when we got to the Big Easy.  We ate in a Mexican restaurant, where the proprietor was convinced Chan was some variety of Latina and kept trying to speak Spanish to her, deaf to her protests that she was in fact English.  She’s going to have so much fun in South America.

I have not bothered to look up what ‘Antebellum’ means

We spent a night there and then drove across to Mobile, Alabama, chiefly because I wanted to.  We stopped briefly in Destin, where we found a Big Fat Head in the wild:

Mobile was a lot more pleasant than I expected, but I was expecting moonshine, baseball caps and domestic violence.  Blame your exported cultural stereotypes, not me.  Anyway, it’s a nice town.  We stayed in another historic building B&B, which again was very nice.

Antebellum, probably. Still no idea.

I made sure to have the local shrimp and grits (grits are old news for me, much like fried green tomatoes and eggs cooked more than two ways.  You have no secrets from me now, America).  We were only there for a night, so the following morning we made time to visit the one-third scale version of the fort, which they demolished at some point.  It has a quaint museum of the local colonial history from which I learned of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.  This chap was one of the French co-founders of Mobile who was a skilled linguist who conversed fluently with the local Indians as well as adopting all of their tattoos and joined them hunting and on war parties in the nude.  When in Rome, I guess.

 
Hardcore

We also popped into the nearby just-as-historic Condé-Charlotte house museum, run by two delightful ladies from -and I’ll make sure to get this right- The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Alabama.

They’ve set up the various rooms to be themed in the style of the various powers that’ve owned and run the area over the years, hence the flags outside.  They have a very tactile approach to the explanation and demonstration of the priceless period artefacts in their collection (one quote: “Huh, someone’s torn the leather (in a 200 year old writing box).  It wasn’t like that on Monday”), but each to their own.

 

Which reminds me to link to this video about the Confederate flag, the legitimate version of which is shown on that shield above:

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Ich muss mich beeilen. Ich habe zwei Wochen nach den USA zu diskutieren und nur einen Tag es zu tun. Wir sind von Florida nach Mobile, Alabama gereist. Wir haben jetzt eine koreanische Auto.

A last word on the Cruise

 

I felt a bit emotional about the end of the cruise, whether that was because I'd enjoyed it so much or just Stockholm Syndrome I can’t easily say, but it was definitely an important holiday within our larger trip.

We met a lot of very nice people.  One group in particular stand out (Hi Sue, Andy and the rest of you) from our second dinner, who were a delightful crowd of veteran cruise-goers also from the UK.  It was nice to meet people with their own stories to tell, as (and this will sound spoiled as hell) we are getting a bit sick of our own voices, talking about this trip.  So our raucous table of miscreants (the waiter had us sing an Elvis song, for no reason I can discern) was a welcome change of scene.

The entertainment was cheesy but endearing. We did pretty well at the cruise-long quiz league, bearing in mind there was just us two in the team.  We won the Mr and Mrs game, because survival requires that I be synchronised to my wife’s every whim and thought.  Although Chan still doesn’t know why she dragged us up on stage.  Although I had managed to tie my bow tie that night (first time since we got married, and that time I had our naval officer friend Simon to dress me) so perhaps she just made the most of me being presentable.

On the last day at sea there was an egg-drop competition which we failed at comprehensively.  We had to build something to protect an egg after we lofted it off the top floor of the atrium.  We rather half-arsed ours by filling four condoms with water and packing them, some plastic bags and one and a half pieces of French toast around our egg.  We made an eggy, slightly-lubed water bomb. Some of the other entries were more creative but we were going for accuracy.

I dubbed it “The Babymaker”


Deputy Cruise Director Matt with “Eggburt”

 
To be fair, Chan was dead on.

So, the entertainment as cheesy, a fair number of our fellow passengers were stereotypical grouchy old Americans, the restaurant food was nice but did have the hint of ‘airline’ about it due to the scale of production, and the bodies scattered about the pool don’t bear looking at, but for all that it was a pleasant place to call home for two weeks.  The staff really made constant efforts to make everything great and I really liked wandering around the ship, eating or swimming or whatever at a whim.  

As we approach the end of the American phase, it was nice to see some countries that we otherwise might not have visited, and to have this to bookmark this part of the trip.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Die Kreuzfahrt ist beendet. Es war angenehm und wir einige tolle Leute kennen gelernt.