The Curmudgeon Does New Orleans, Day One!

Well, gentle readers, I know it’s been a couple of weeks since I enhanced your lives with any new content, but I hope the wait will be worth it thanks to today’s super-enhanced, super-long, super-exciting entry: New Orleans, Curmudgeon Style!

Day One: Getting There Is Half the Fun!

Having spent the first day of our vacation attending a wedding in the Houston area, the Long Suffering Wife and I were a few hours closer to New Orleans when we left that Sunday morning for what would be our first extended outing to the Crescent City. After a thrilling jaunt across the city of Houston on I-10, we stopped for lunch in Orange, Texas at what I now affectionately refer to as The Taco Bell at the End of the Universe/Taco Hell.

Artist's conception or actual photo?

This joint hadn’t seen a coat of paint in 15 years, was staffed by surly teens and harried harridans, and there was a sheen of grime on almost every conceivable surface. We hurriedly bolted down our burritos and returned to the road, happy to have our immortal souls (well, what’s left of mine, anyway) intact.

After a delightful (read: Eric screaming because he’s afraid of heights) drive across several river-spanning bridges and some long stretches built above the swamps, we arrived at our first stop: New Iberia, Louisiana. Now, I know what most of you are thinking – Eric loves him some food, and he most likely loves him some Tabasco sauce, so naturally, they must have been there to tour the Tabasco plant, right?

Wrong. This is why we drove two hours out of the way:

Awwww, yeah!

That’s right, baby – Shadows-on-the-Teche! What, you’ve never heard of the Shadows? One of the best-preserved plantation homes in the south, with its wealth of original artifacts and tons of documentation? Still nothing? Would an awesome picture of me standing in front of it help?

Ladies and gentlemen, the Shadows!

Unless you’re a Grack, this probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but trust me when I say that there was something pretty sweet about touring a historic site you spent a goodly chunk of the first year of graduate school studying.

As we resumed our trip to NOLA, we stopped in Baton Rouge for dinner at what can only be described as the Long Suffering Wife’s idea of the perfect restaurant: Raising Cane’s, a joint that sells only chicken fingers.

I think she likes it!

I’ve never seen her happier (including on our wedding day). As the LSW put it, for the first time in her life, she could order chicken fingers in a restaurant and not be embarrassed.

Yup, I'd say she'll go back.

Some more time on the road finally led us to New Orleans, where we checked into our hotel and took the first of several pictures of the two of us scrunched together while one of us holds the camera at an awkward angle, seen here.

Cheese!

It was around 9:00 p.m., so, naturally I was thinking about food, which led us to our first excursion into an area of town we’d be spending a LOT of time in for the next three days: the French Quarter. Because what’s open 24 hours a day, is located on Jackson Square, and sells food that I’ve heard compared to crack? Café du Monde, baby!

A glimpse of Paradise

As we made our way through the quarter, I was a bit “concerned” (the LSW says “freaked out”) by the number of sketchy characters flitting in and out of the shadows along the way down Magazine Street, but there were enough tourists and street performers around to off-set the scariness. You must remember, friends, I grew up in a town with about 14,000 people in it, so seeing a teeming mass of humanity wandering around in the dark, historic confines of the French Quarter after spending all day in the car, hepped up on caffeine and sugar was enough to put me a bit on edge. So what better way to cure all that than by eating even MORE sugar and caffeine, right?

Pictured: crack.

Abso-freaking-lutely. Folks, I don’t wax rhapsodic about food very often (cough*that’s-a-lie*cough), but believe me when I say that there is nothing in this world that can match the awesomeness of a fresh, hot beignet dusted in powdered sugar and accompanied by a hot cup of chicory-infused coffee. For those of you who’ve never had a beignet before, it’s essentially a dense funnel cake that’s roughly sopapilla-shaped, fried, and then topped with enough powdered sugar to choke a drug mule. But no description really does it justice, so the only way to know for sure is to drive to New Orleans, walk straight to Café du Monde, and lose yourself in a piece of culinary wonder. You will not be disappointed.

Pictured: crackhead taking a hit.

After one last look at Jackson Square by night, we headed back to the hotel for some much-needed rest before the adventures of Day Two, which will grace this blog soon. See you then, ma cherie!

Jackson Square by night