French Quarter and Fauberg Marigny

Beautiful, warm, humid, pollen-laden, cloudy day in NOLA on Wednesday. Mary & Trudie wanted beignets from Café du Monde, so we walked over there thru the French Market. I bought two mask Christmas decorations for the grandkids, we all bought pralines from Aunt Sally’s, we walked over the levee path to see the Mississippi River, and got in line for our beignets. We each ate one while they were hot and brought the rest back to our hotel to eat on our balcony with coffee. The hotel has a large balcony with ice cream tables and chairs, so we ate there and planned our 3 days here.

We set out on Rue Royal for lunch at Felix’s and to explore the French Quarter. I found some gorgeous hand-made Mardi Gras masks at an art gallery on Rue Royal. They hand craft the masks right out in the store where you can watch them while you shop. I want to buy one. Trudie stopped in an old-fashioned pharmacy where they used to top shelf all around as a kind of pharmacy museum – and they had an old tile soda fountain! The owner told us that his family owns the building and has run the pharmacy since 1941.

We had lunch at Felix’s – which was almost all the way to Canal Street. I had a fried catfish Po’ Boy and a cup of Gumbo – delicious. The food and the restaurant were OK, but not the fabulous that was advertised. We walked back on Chartres. I stopped at Hove’ Parfumerie which has moved. I bought a Verveine refill and a Rose Geranium bottle. We stopped in quite a few other shops which I can’t remember now. Chartres is a little rough near the Neutral Ground, but you can see signs of gentrification. There was a Pharmacy Museum on Chartres, but we decided not to explore it today. We stopped at an art gallery where the artist made 3-D topo maps of depths of water (including the Great Lakes, Lake Ponchatrain, and the Mississippi River at the Port of New Orleans) out of bass wood. Unique and beautiful.

We had drinks at the hotel bar and talked so long that we missed our opportunity to eat at the Praline Connection in Fauberg Marigny. But on the bright side, that gave us an opportunity to hear the Tin Men band at d.b.a. New Orleans. One of their members played a washboard with a bicycle bell and 2 large tin cans attached. It was the percussion. They played a wonderfully odd and eclectic mix of music – Cab Calloway songs popularized by Mickey Mouse and one parody of a song about Paula Dean.

We moved next door to Snug Harbor where we had purchased tickets for the 10 pm show. We got there a little after 9, after taking some selfies outdoors. Believe it or not, this put us first in line to be ushered into the show when they were prepared for us. I bellied up to the bar and ordered a drink and some stuffed mushrooms from the bartender. I never did get my drink – or a check for the mushrooms. Worst bartender ever.

The band playing that night was Delfayo Marsalis’ Uptown Jazz Orchestra. I think it was 14 or 15 players (5 on saxophones all of different sizes, 4 on trombone, 2 on drums, and 3 on trumpet.). They were great – funny, entertaining, and good musicians. They did a jazz thru the decades set. Louis Armstrong to Charlie Mingus. I do not care for the dissonance of Mingus, but liked all the rest. The alto sax player got most of the play time during the whole show. He was good. And one of the trumpet players showed up about an hour late. It is New Orleans, you know.

We walked back to our hotel along Frenchman until it turned into Decatur. That intersection looked like the City garbage dump. When we got to Decatur, Trudie and Mary wanted to eat, since we had missed dinner. I wanted to sleep since all that pollen had stuffed me up. When I came back to the hotel alone, the hotel clerk gave me some Mardi Gras green beads.<