Zowee.
It has been a big 24 hours!
I think I said I was fairly tired after yesterday's outing to the Audubon Zoo? I didn't realise how tired until quite a bit later. After typing last night's post I went to Rouses Supermarket on Royal Street to get groceries for dinner (bread, tuna, fun stuff like that). Don't judge, but this did take me past the Bayou Club and a bloody mary. Anyhow, I continued on to Rouses and got the things I needed. I also saw and grabbed a bottle of something I need to stock up on before I go. That is, this -
Give me a syringe and some rubber bands and I will mainline this stuff. Anyway, I had dinner and was watching one of those ghost-hunting shows on Travel Channel at about 10:00. I woke up at about 2:00am with the TV still on, having simply dropped off to sleep on the bed. Annoyingly, I didn't really get properly back to sleep after this and it was a less than refreshed version of me that hauled himself out of bed this morning.
Today's plan was brunch/early lunch with Joni, the girls, Philip and Sabrina at Mulates and then visiting the Children's Museum. I attended to a few emails and got the directions from Google Maps and headed off.
Image from here.
Mulates was about a 10 minute walk away (check out their website, by the way - it has a great audio!). It's an upmarket Cajun restaurant with the usual dishes of po'boys, gumbo, jambalaya and the like. Grace was in a very interactive mood and was sitting by me. She wanted me to help colour in the little pictures on her kids menu (I souveniered this with her little scribblings on it - love it!) and wanted to talk and even to dance (yep, they had Cajun music on the background). Rachel was a little more clingy and kept cuddling up to Joni.
We ordered gumbo and rice for the girls and onion rings as an appetiser for ourselves. The girls weren't into the gumbo but both loved the rice and the french fries we got them as a fallback option. I ordered the jambalaya as I hadn't had it yet on this trip. I know it must seem like I never meet food in this city I don't love, but this, again, is a place you have to treat yourself if you're in New Orleans. The prices are reasonable given the quality of the place, and the portion sizes are very generous (after a big plate of jambalaya, I can tell you I did not want to move!).
We walked from Mulates to the Children's Museum. The Museum is, well, targeted at children. It's best described as a series of indoor playgrounds designed to kindle young minds. So, for example, there was a "Little Port of New Orleans" where kids could climb into a simple replica of a ship's wheelhouse, or balance blocks on a model of a ship without tipping it over. Grace especially loved the "Cajun life" and "City life" sections, because they had models of houses that she called her "castles", and that she chiefly wanted me to play with her in, by tucking her into the model of a bed, or by having a little tea party. And she'd say things like asking me to make her some coffee or potato salad while she was in bed, and then she'd jump up and say it was time to get up. And her favourite things of all were anything she could slide down (it blew her little mind when I whizzed her back up the slides a few times!). Another time she picked up one of the dolls and was rocking it as if to get it to sleep, and then decided it didn't want to sleep and so she pretended to drive it in a little wooden car. It meant the world to me when she was saying "I love you too" when I told her I loved her, and when she said she saw me on the computer.
Rachel tended to be with Joni more of the day. She showed one thing I'd never thought of - she is fearless going into enclosed spaces, dashing into a cardboard "secret tunnel" that ran along two walls of the museum. She especially loved the little wooden railway, and liked having her own little hard hat and hi-vis vest to wear. She was especially fascinated by the skeleton riding a bicycle that pedals when you pedal a bicycle beside it, and made a point of saying bye-bye to it when we left.
Image from here
We both felt it'd be good if the girls had a normal day and went to school tomorrow, so the plan is for us to meet somewhere for dinner tomorrow evening somewhere between their place and New Orleans. I got kisses and "I love you toos" from both of the girls when we wrapped up. That alone made the day a royal win!
I came back to the Hotel to regroup and upload photos and decided to go to Mass at St Patrick's Church on Camp Street.
St Patrick's is very much a church in the old style: the only altar is the high altar, so the priest consecrates the Host with his back to the congregation, as I think is done in the Latin Mass. Also, there's a communion rail, and everyone knelt at it to receive communion.
Image from here
Initially these things struck me as a little odd, although they meant I was paying extra attention during the service. I guess it might not be the sort of service I would want every week, but I think it's healthy to have your expectations set skew-whif every once in a while too.
I came back here and was intending to go for a run but somehow got sucked into the vortex of Nik Wallenda tight roping over the Grand Canyon. I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe I'm too cynical, but
there seemed something "fake" about it all. In the lead-up, it was as if Discovery Channel was pretending to be ramping up the tension, and the audience (well, the twittersphere) was pretending to be nervous. It just seemed a little unreal - as if there was no way there would be any version that didn't have a happy ending. As if they were talking about the possibility of death, and the viewers were sitting there, not really believing a word of it.
I had dinner while watching the tightrope walk and afterwards was feeling a bit cooped up, so I went out for a walk from the hotel to the Riverwalk and then past Jackson Square to the French Market and back.
And now? Typing this, having an Abita satsuma wheat beer and listening to the jazz on WWOZ. Tomorrow I need to do a little laundry and also arrange to hire a car for tomorrow and Tuesday. Really happy about how this visit is going, and how many memories I'm getting to make with the little princesses.
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