Current Location: New Orleans LA
Mileage: local driving only
States Travelled: N/A

Well, my suspicions were right – while my opinion of Bourbon Street hasn’t changed (it’s a hole), today proved to me that New Orleans really has some quaint, European flavor left in it.

We started the day with an aborted trip to Cafe du Monde, in the French Market. The Quarter is a bit calmer in the morning, although I was surprised to see so many of the bars open & serving patrons. I say it was an aborted trip because the line to get IN to the Cafe was halfway down the block. (You were right, Becca. We should have gotten there earlier.) We decided to drive out to the Garden District and have an early lunch (I had my first Po’ Boy) before catching our walking tour.

The Garden District was where I started to come around about New Orleans in general – granted, as our tour guide pointed out, the homes in the District were actually “American-style” (because none of the French would sell incoming Americans land in the Quarter), the neighborhood still has a tranquility to it that wouldn’t be out of place in a European city. The homes themselves were in various states of repair, renovation, or flat-out reconstruction, but the owners have the money to tend to the brick & plaster walls and cyprus wood columns and the cast-iron fencing. The tour itself took about two hours, and was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Seeing as how it was about 90 degrees here today, after the tour we jumped back in the truck and took a quick ride past some of the other houses on St. Charles. We passed by the Belfort mansion, home of the Real World New Orleans cast – Darren was surprised the place looked so run-down. I didn’t get to see it for very long, what with being behind the wheel, but I suspect that Belfort became something of a curiosity after the show aired, and rather than trying to get it back into shape after MTV pulled out, the owner just decided to let it go. A shame, really. Anyway, we came back to the hotel to relax a bit and get refreshed/recharged for the evening. We had dinner on the balcony at Carmellos (on Decatur, near the Jackson Brewery) – excellent, authentic Italian food, and a mocha cheesecake to DIE for. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees, making it just a little chilly before our Vampire Tour started. Similar to the Jack the Ripper tour I took in London last year, except that nearly all the buildings from the stories are still standing – we had a facinating guide (a native New Orleanian wearing a period suit and being led around by Xena, the tour dog, an imposing-looking German Shephard) who shared some gruesome stories about vampires in the Quarter. (Tidbit for the day: the concept of sunlight killing a vampire is pure Bram Stoker – vampires of folklore [there’s a difference] began hunting and feeding at noon and retired at midnight – or when their hunger was sated.) Moreover, it was nice to see areas of the Quarter that hadn’t been overrun with tourists and turned into an extension of Bourbon Street. If I had seen more of this last night, my initial opinion might have been a little cheerier.

We had considered hitting a jazz club tonight – we got the traditional Memphis flavor earlier in the week, and wanted the New Orleans funk/zydeco sound – but frankly, I’m looking at close to a six-hour drive to Houston tomorrow, and I wanted to call it an early night. We’re nearing the end of the driving – Houston tomorrow, Austin on Monday, and DFW (and a laundromat, hopefully) on Tuesday.

As a side note, the pictures from earlier in the week are sitting in iPhoto – I need to cull through the 269 of them before I post to the web.

Finally, I know it’s a little early, but I wanted to wish all my Christian friends a Happy Easter.