Off the beaten path

Today was our day of new and "off the beaten path" explorations. Though, we started pretty traditionally: with Emma and Bertha, the founders of the Court of Two Sisters. one of the traditional legends in the French Quarter. We've had it before, but the jazz brunch buffet is always overwhelming, with everything from grits and gumbo to crawfish and grits to Banana Foster and breadpudding.


Well fed, we waited for the #11 bus to take us uptown (as usually, you have to be patient when doing so, but on the other hand it's still amazingly cheap: $ 3 for a day pass!) and checked out a couple of shops and restaurants along Magazine Street for the book update. We found cool stores, one of them was "Bootsy's Funrock'n", and noticed again, that this is the place for "serious shoppers". Here the locals shop and dine and here you won't find your typical T-Shirts, masks and other New Orleans souvenirs, but ecclectic merchandise like authentic New Orleans T-Shirts made in the USA (at "Storyville") or vintage clothing at POP City; same for the restaurant scene. This Uptown neighborhood is really picking up and getting more and more attractive.

Same for Central City's Faubourg Lafayette. After having walked parts of Magazine and the Garden District (see pic), we took the streetcar to get to the new Southern Food and Beverage Museum in the historic Dryades Market building. It's a work-in-progress still, but the museum, library & archives are open already and there will soon be a restaurant and bar with regional southern delicacies. It's all about Southern food and beverages and, soon, cocktails as well. We'll certainly check out again next time.

We noticed that there is more going on in the neighborhood: The new Irving Mayfield's Jazz Market is right now under construction in the same market building complex, across the street and, also in the vicinity, a couple of "fancy" places came up, e.g. Church Alley Coffeebar & Zeitgeist or Café Reconcile. The coffeebar would well fit into Williamsburg/Brooklyn with its ecclectic choice of trash furniture and it's concert venue in the backroom.

The golden-shimmering Mercedez Benz Superdome - a shelter for many people during Hurricane Katrina and later renovated – and the "Smoothie King Center" - the renamed home of the N.O. Pelicans, the professional basketball team – are impressive, but the neighboring former New Orleans shopping center was never re-opened again after Katrina. Same for one of the skyscrapers there, shut down and dilapidating, similar to the former World Trade Center on the riverfront, where we had our very first cocktails, Sazeracs and Hurricanes, in New Orleans in the top floor bar thanks to coupons we always got. Now it's standing there empty for many years. What a pity in this location! We also took a look at the Amtrak railroad station: that was where we arrived by train at least twice and schlepped our luggage to a cheap hotel.

In the meantime we were getting used to waiting for the public transport again and took the green streetcar all the way to Harrah's Casino to change to the red train along the waterfront to the French Market. There were another couple of places we still had to check out before we headed in the direction of our hotel and enjoyed Happy Hour at one of the bars closeby. Surprisingly, the barkeeper was a lady from Wuerzburg/Germany (the place we studied for a year) and the crowds were pretty mixed: from San Francisco, New Jersey, New Zealand... discussing football - funny! We got a flight of beer and gator sausage for $ 5 each and afterwards headed "home" to our "traveling office".