From the trip to the Mensa Annual Gathering, in early July. Warning. Travelogue. Probably boring.
New Orleans wasn't nearly as hot and humid as I had been led to expect. In fact, it was downright pleasant. It was hot, but there was always a breeze. It rained a few times, but except for one brief downpour, it was always a light short sprinkle. Altogether very pleasant - perfect, as far as I am concerned. I'm happy hot, as long as there's a small breeze.
I went on a tour of the Garden District, which included a cemetery tour. Everyone is buried in aboveground crypts, which I knew. But the insides of those crypts are not at all what I had expected. I had imagined shelves along the walls, with nice sedate coffins on the shelves. Nope. There's one side-to-side shelf across the middle, and a sort of floored pit in the bottom. A coffin is placed on the shelf, and then "one year and one day" later, the crypt is opened, the body is removed from the coffin (if there is one), the coffin is burned, and the jumbled bones are dumped into the lower pit, with all the jumbled bones of the previous occupants. The shelf is now ready for another family member. If someone else dies before the one-year-and-a-day has elapsed, the new body is stored in rectangular cubbies (like big post office boxes!) in the wall surrounding the cemetery until the proper time has elapsed. Apparently, the year-and-a-day is set by law.
In the Garden District, I had naively expected gardens. Two centuries ago, maybe, but not now. The garden district was where wealthy Anglos built their mansions after the Louisiana Purchase. The streets were laid out in square blocks, and each owner had one quarter of a block. They built their mansions in the corners, and put beautiful gardens between the houses. But when hard times finally fell on the south, the spaces between the mansions were sold, and now each block has a stately columned mansion on each corner, and smaller houses between them. No more gardens.
Our guide pointed out architectural details, and gave us the history of the houses and their owners. It was interesting, but not what I had expected. I would have liked to have been able togo into one of them.... Because the ground is subsiding, the upkeep on these houses is incredible, like $6,000 a month! Every so often they have to be jacked up while the foundation is rebuilt, and these are HUGE houses (They have attached 3-story slave quarters in the back).
As is frequent with any Mensa group, there was one member who monopolized the guide and annoyed and embarrassed everyone else with incredibly stupid questions. Yeah, I know, "if you don't know the answer, there are no stupid questions", but when the answer should be obvious, or the question has nothing to do with the topic, or directly contradicts what the guide just said, then it's a stupid question. Our SQer this time wore a bright red shirt. Remember him. He reappears.
The tour group had taken a trolley out to the Garden District. It seemed awfully far out from the Old Quarter (a.k.a. Veaux Carre a.k.a. French Quarter), which back then would have been "The city", especially for the days of horse and carriage. I guess these were "country houses"?
The guide had said we should take the same trolley to the end of the line sometime - it's the route of the Mardi Gras parade, and would give a good taste of the varied architecture of New Orleans. So NJ and I did exactly that, that afternoon. It was nice. We were amazed at all the strings of beads hanging from the trees. I guess they don't deteriorate, and build up year after year. Near the end of the line we passed Tulane, a nice historic-looking campus, and across the street from Tulane was a pretty park. If we had known then that the zoo was in that park, we would have gotten off the trolley and gone to the zoo. It's on my list for the next time I visit New Orleans.
That evening I was doing my volunteer duty at the registration desk when "Red-Shirt" showed up. He wanted us to tell him how to get in touch with his dinner group. Huh?
He had eaten dinner with some folks the evening before, and wanted us to tell him how he could find those people this evening for dinner. We told him that if he hadn't arranged with them where to meet, or how to communicate, we certainly couldn't help. We told him he could have the hotel desk call their rooms for him, or he could try putting a note on the bulletin board outside the hospitality room. Nothing was good enough. He quite literally wanted us to find the people for him. Like page them or something (we had no facility for paging). No, he didn't remember their full names. He was angry and argued with us. Seemed to think we were delinquent in our duties. When he finally stomped off in disgust, I told the other guy at the desk about his having been on the tour that morning, and said that I wouldn't be surprised if the previous night's companions were hiding from him today. He said yeah, "Red-Shirt" was well known at the national office. He regularly drives them batty. He always wears red or orange shirts - like that swami cult in the late '60s and '70s.
NJ hadn't signed up for any tours when she'd registered, and they filled up fast. So when I said I would be going on a morning French Quarter tour, she expressed regret. But fully 1/3 of the people signed up for the Garden District tour hadn't shown up, so I suggested that she be in the lobby when the group formed for the FQ tour. Sure enough, again 1/3 were no shows, so she got to go, and she didn't even have to pay for it.
That tour was again very good. Lots of history and lore. Unfortunately, for some reason, maybe the impending hurricane Dennis, none of the "house" museums were open. Another thing I added to my "when I return" list.
I was determined not to leave New Orleans without having walked down Bourbon (pronounced "burr-BONE") Street, had fried green tomatoes, and crawfish, and bignettes (is that like beignets?), donut-like pillows drenched in powdered sugar. I got it all. Everyone had raved about the pillowy things, so they were a bit of a disappointment - they are exactly like local fairground fried dough, just a different shape. And I was happy to find that my own fried green tomatoes compare favorably with those of New Orleans. The crawfish were tasty, but I can't imagine ever having to "peel" the durn things - they are tiny! Lots smaller than the "crawdads" we catch in northern streams.
I had a lunch at the Commander's Palace, which is supposed to be one of the world's best restaurants. The food did not impress me, but the choreographed service did. There were four of us at the table, and for each course, four waiters appeared, and at some silent signal all four placed the food in front of us at exactly the same time. Stuff like that.
There was a particular restaurant (something like Bennagen? Berrigan? Battigun?) in the French Quarter where NJ wanted to have a dinner, but she couldn't remember where it was. So one evening she and I walked - must have been miles! - up and down and back and forth every street, until we were thoroughly lost - and found it. We'll never find it again! But she was right - it was wonderful.
I'd had a few more frustrating encounters with Red-Shirt, and I was telling her about it, when guess who was escorted to the table of five, right next to us! We whooped with laughter. She said maybe he's stalking me. I pointed out that he never shows any kind of recognition when he sees me. That makes stalking a little hard. More laughter.
One morning, NJ and I went to the aquarium, which was about three blocks from the hotel. Toward the end of our pass through the aquarium, I rounded a corner and was stunned. It was the first time I had ever seen jellyfish "in the wild" so to speak. I had seen pictures and videos, and a few very small isolated ones in tanks, but this was the first time I had seen a whole bunch of huge ones, pulsing and undulating up and down, passing each other, transparent, gossamer, unbelievable alive, incredibly beautiful. It's hard to accept that they really exist. I was fascinated, and could have stared much longer, but we had to get back for (I think - the timeline is all screwed up in my head) the awards luncheon at the hotel. Our local newsletter got the small chapter's award for excellence. (Just incidentally, NJ and I are both past editors.)
NJ also wanted to do some shopping, so there was another afternoon we spent getting lost, eating a delicious dinner in a dive, dropping into antique and jewelry shops by the score, never finding what we were looking for. We ended up walking along the river in the early evening. All of New Orleans' streets were unexpectedly clean. My feet were hurting (for some reason, my little toes rub on the side of the shoe, no matter what I wear), so I took my shoes off and walked barefoot through the riverside park and almost all the way back to the hotel without worrying about my feet, or stepping on/into anything nasty. That was pleasant.
Oh, almost forgot - at one of the group meals, the breakfast, I think, I actually got to see it for myself! Zanka auctioned off an ordinary one dollar bill for well over $1000.
~~Silk
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