...and then there was Las Vegas

If you need a mini-encore, starting tomorrow for three days I will be putting up a post each day spanning the Las Vegas part of the blog on our Spring 2019 trip.

https://phnst2019.blogspot.com/

New Orleans - Boston - Home (October 25)

We awoke to, or were awakened by, heavy rain and a thunderstorm.

Leaving the Pontchartrain Hotel, I reflected on the fact that it was not what I expected.  This had caused some concern that lingered through the first night before dissipating. 

As previously mentioned, it was not the grand dame I thought it would be, having only become a hotel in 2016. Originally an apartment building (which explained our room's shape), at the time it was the tallest building in NOLA.  The hotel was not cookie-cutter bright and shiny and had a certain casualness to it, but it was fun and comfortable.  We would stay there again.

It was an uneventful trip to the old airport, the new one not opening until next month.  Once there, it was apparent that the city had not recently been investing new money in an old terminal.

Our flight departed about 30 minutes late. We had a lumpy climb-out. Retracing our steps, this time over rather than on the Mississippi and then the Ohio Rivers, seeing "Paducah" (October 11 post) on the map was no longer just an unfamiliar, odd name.

Having made up time in the air, we arrived in Boston on schedule, but then had to wait to deplane while they dealt with a problem with the gantry.  Fortunately, while we sat the luggage unloading process continued so it was waiting on the baggage carousel when we got there.

About an hour after we got home, the alarm system chirped. It was a faulty smoke sensor in one of the bedrooms. Not wanting to deal with the core problem, I poked at the keypad, thinking that I had fixed it until an hour later when it chirped again. Going to bed with it chirping was not an option because there is a second panel in out bedroom.

This time I took down the smoke detector and discovered it required a CR123 battery.  What's a guy to do when you need such an odd battery at that hour of the night.  For me, it required going all the way to my workbench and getting one out of a drawer.  Problem solved.  Time for bed.

No matter how great the trip we have been on, one of my favorite parts is the first night back in my own bed.

Another favorite: I like writing my blog posts, albeit sometimes days or weeks (or months) after the day the activities took place, but it always feels good to finish the last one.

The end.

New Orleans, LA (October 24)

After a leisurely start, we took a trolley and then a bus to Canal Street. (We had to transfer from the trolley to the bus due to rail work not associated with the Hard Rock Hotel collapse.)

Getting off the bus, we could see the building. The previous weekend there had been a controlled demolition of two cranes that hung precariously on the top of the building. The site remained too unstable to recover the body of two workers killed in the collapse.

The building was still considered a danger zone and, due to its size, so was a two-block radius around it.  There was a police cordon with fire equipment on scene. All the businesses inside the cordon were closed and will remain so until the building comes down.  

The business owners will be suing the hotel owners.  The city will be suing the owners.  The owners will be suing the architects. The architects will be suing the general contractor.  The general contractor will be suing subcontractors. There are permutations and combinations of those plaintiffs and defendants as well as other parties.  Basically everyone will be suing everyone for years to come.  (FEB 03 update: The building will probably come down with a controlled implosion sometime in March, 2020.]

We wandered through the French Quarter to the Mississippi River waterfront, then along it to Cafe du Monde for beignets and a hot latte. Some say that it is not the best beignet in the city, but it was pretty darn good.

We rendezvoused with our friends Bruce and Nancy in Jackson Park. They had just come from Antoine's (which claims to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the country since Delmonico's closed) They reported that the food was great and service impeccable. It is about two blocks from Tableau - the restaurant we ate at last night.

Yesterday they had gone on a food and drink tour of the French Quarter that included a stop at Tableau. They said the tour was fun, but a bit fast-paced.

Circumventing the street performers and their audience in front of St. Louis Cathedral, we went inside.

The flags in the cathedral represented the governments that ruled the diocese during the history of the church. The number of flags reflected the colorful history of the city.

Mule's name was Leblanc

We walked to Decatur where, after buying some Cafe du Monde souvenirs, we took a carriage ride. Our driver Scott was a character; a transplant who only moved to NOLA after Hurricane Sandy destroyed his tattoo business somewhere on the Jersey shore.

We learned about the Pontalba Buildings that line opposing sides of Jackson Park and about Miceala Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba who was quite an interesting woman. 

Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop - oldest bar in the French Quarter

As we moved through the French Quarter, Scott continued to regale us with facts. He explained the difference between a balcony and a gallery, the latter far more common here. Romeo spikes had more than a decorative purpose on the top of a fence; they discouraged a boyfriend from climbing over them to visit the owner's daughter.

Halloween is only a week away

It was a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit totally touristy experience.

After saying adieu to Bruce & Nancy, we walked along the waterfront and then past Harrod's Casino over to Canal Street and up it to the bus stop. It proved to be a generally boring route, but our timing was good. Just as we got on the bus, raindrops started falling, with a well-timed pause when we made the bus- to-trolley transfer for the second leg of the trip back to the hotel.

The rain having moved off, before dinner we went back up to the bar on the top floor of the hotel for another view of the city.

We had dinner at Jack Rose. Located in the Pontchartrain Hotel, the restaurant was named after a character in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo. Tennessee Williams lived in the hotel when it was an apartment building and it may be here that he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire. 

The hotel had a framed draft of a page from the play. Then as now, the St. Charles trolley ran literally right in front of the hotel. It seemed plausible. 

There are competitors for that claim. My personal theory is that it was written in multiple places he was known to frequent.

One thing not in dispute is that Tennessee Williams remains NOLA's favorite son just like Ernest Hemingway is in Key West (and favorite ex-pat in Havana?).

We had a good meal in Jack Rose's trendy venue.  Our waitress Emily was from Philadelphia. We were at the upper end of the age range. It was fun to people-watch. I still missed Britt, Rebecca and Bella.

After dinner it was easy to pack for tomorrow's trip home. All that was required was to get everything into the bags and be sure that they did not weigh over 50 pounds.  

New Orleans, LA (October 23)

We spent a leisurely morning walking through part of the Garden District.

After an early lunch, we were picked up for a Pearl River Eco-Tour. The driver told us that it would be about a forty-minute trip. On our way out of town, we encountered a traffic backup caused by a broken-down hop-On/hop‐Off bus halfway across a long bridge. Prophetic.

The van took I-10 east towards Slidell, crossing the eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain. We then took some secondary roads, eventually arriving at the Honey Island Swamp in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. We disembarked the van at the base station located on the Old (West) Pearl River.

We met our guide Trey who grew up in the area.  He loved all things relating to hunting, trapping and fishing and was a self-proclaimed great cook of anything wild that he brought home. He was certainly knowledgeable and shared information in an entertaining way.

During our tour we transitioned from marsh to swamp, the former tall grasses and other herbaceous plants and the latter dominated by trees. The entire area was within a bayou, which Trey said was a southern term for a slow-moving river.

While in the swamp, we saw raccoons and wild hogs. To get them to come near, Trey threw them sugar-free marshmallows. He explained that although the animals wolfed them down, the marshmallows (as we all know) do not have any substance in them that is filling, so eating them does not change an animal's dependence on foraging for food.    

We started back to the city about 4:30 aboard a 27-passenger bus.  Halfway across the long bridge spanning the eastern part of Lake Pontchartrain, while traveling in the left lane and doing probably better than 70 MPH, the outer right rear tire, over which Pam was seated, blew.

The driver pulled off on the left-hand breakdown lane. Every large truck that passed caused the bus to rock.

This was the view from my left side window seat.

Recognizing that we were not in a good place, and because it had two rear tires on each side, in a breath-holding, heart-racing maneuver, the driver pulled the van back into traffic, working it over to the right-hand lane and eventually off the bridge. 

Once off the bridge, we pulled to the side of the road to assess the status of the remaining rear tire. A passenger who was knowledgeable (or just faked it to get back in time for a dinner reservation) said it would get us the rest of the way back to the city.  This became a less bad idea when we were joined by two cars, one taking station ahead of us and the other behind us, both with their flashers on.  

The van went as far as the first hotel, tire thumping in the wheel well almost the entire way there.  

We all got out and had an opportunity to see the blown tire. If you look closely, you will notice that the edge of the wheel looks oddly ragged.

There was no tread, or more accurately no tire where the tread used to be. Only the tire wall that was high enough up to remain clear of the pavement (due to the second rear tire on that side and to the inside of this one) survived.

The owners transferred those of us going to other hotels into their cars and dropped us off. 

During the course of events, I mentally questioned some of the decisions made by our driver and the owners. I was not seated where I could accurately assess the viability of theorized options. The mood of those on the bus was stable throughout the experience and remained so even after we disembarked the bus. It would be safe to say that we'd found the afternoon more stressful than expected.

For dinner, having enjoyed it the last time we were here, we returned to Tableau in the French Quarter. The food was good, but the service a bit sloppy, causing me to sorely miss Britt, Rebecca and Bella (our waitstaff at Commander's Palace). 

Tableau is located two blocks from Jackson Square in one direction and Bourbon Street in another. If I was to eat there again and the weather was appropriate, I might request a table upstairs and outdoors.

After dinner we walked over to Bourbon Street and then up it to Canal Street. It was living up to its reputation - lots of people and competing music, hawkers trying to draw in passers-by, individuals who had over-imbibed and those working hard at achieving that status, and a police presence at every cross street.

From Canal Street we caught a taxi back to the hotel.

New Orleans, LA (October 22)

At 8:00 AM, they threw us off the boat.  More accurately, they disembarked us expeditiously so that they could quickly get AMERICA reading for its new passenger manifest.  It had been an interesting experience that I will not dwell on further in this or subsequent posts.  I did post a review on Cruise Critic.

We took a taxi to the Pontchartrain Hotel where, miraculously, our room was ready.  Since we had not anticipated this, we were dressed for a day of touring, so as soon as our bags were delivered headed out, with a stop at the coffee shop for breakfast.

We left the hotel a little before 10, walking about a mile to the World War II National Museum where we rendezvoused with two of our AMERICA shipmates (boatmates?) from Montana - Nancy & Bruce.

We started with a movie that was moving and disturbing, putting in stark terms the magnitude of the destruction in human life not just in terms of combatants, but the far greater number of civilians.  We then visited the exhibits on the European Theater.

Saying good-bye to Nancy & Bruce, we walked to the St. Charles trolley to Audubon Park, rolling past our hotel along the way. 

Audubon Park is across St. Charles from Loyola and Tulane.  We opted to walk in the park rather than around the campuses. 

Leaving the park, we decided to walk back part of the way along St. Charles.  Doing so, we passed a number of houses decorated for Halloween.  One house in particular stood out.  It was locally known as Skeleton House.  While we were standing there cars would pull up, someone hop out and take a few picture, then hope back it and the car depart.

We walked to dinner at Commander's Palace, a restaurant in the Garden District, considered by many as the gold standard for upscale dining in NOLA. 

We had a truly excellent meal served by Britt, Rebecca and Bella, that began with the three soups appetizer. While coat and tie were not required, I was definitely glad that I wore them.

After walking back to the hotel we went to the top floor bar to look out over the city.