This past weekend Julie and I headed down to New Orleans for a long weekend where we met up with some friends we haven’t seen in quite a while. We covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and thanks to our hosts were able to experience a lot of places we would have never made it to on our own.
Parade
Saturday we set up shop at the corner of Louisiana & Magazine for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. I can’t remember the last time I was at an Irish Parade but I know it was nothing like this one. The people on the floats were throwing beads, cabbages, bars of Irish Springs soap amongst other things. Some of the floats had fully stocked bars with Guinness on draft while other parade marches pulled wagons with kegs of beer. Parading is a contact sport in this town, where one needs to keep their head on a swivel. There was a guy standing behind us with a sign that said ‘hit this asshole’ which led to a lot of near misses with giant wads of flying beads.
Music
On Saturday afternoon we walked around the French Quarter for awhile and settled into Balcony Music Club for the afternoon where we caught a couple bands. The second band was a group of high school kids and the audience was made up mostly by their parents. This of course did not discourage us from drinking the $1.50 High Life(s). The kids band was actually really good. From there we headed over to Three Muses where there was a completely packed house for Aurora Nealand’s Royal Roses. To end then night we stopped in the Blue Nile where Kermit Ruffins was playing. I think we paid a cover for only Blue Nile, just an all around great night of music.
Food
It’s hard to express how impressed I was with all the food. We hit a variety of places including regional favorites and some small out of the way places that were just great. We had Fried Chicken at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, broiled crawfish at the parade, some amazing small dishes at Bouchiere (crab legs, boudin balls, and steamed muscles to name a few). Julie managed to get her sweet fix at Cafe Du Monde and we had poor boys at Parkway Bakery & Tavern where the girl at the counter gave me shit for my sunburn. Our trip was rounded out with sandwiches at Cochon Butcher and a semi-classy dinner at Lüke Restaurant.
National World War II Museum
Seeing that I made an effort to hit the World War I Musuem when I was in Kansas City I thought it would be proper to check out the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The museum is in the area of the city where all the Higgin’s boats were made for the numerous landings in the Pacific and the D-Day assault in Normandy. The museum isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the WWI museum, this one basically starts with the build up to the American involvement and then takes you through the D-Day landings. They did have some amazing artifacts and the breakdown of the landings was interesting.
Side Notes:
* The Robert E. Lee statue at Lee Circle nearly has his back turned to the World War II Musuem.
** I covered a lot of ground in the world of New Orleans beer. The most prevalent and largest selection of beers were from Abita Brewing Company (which was in nearly every bar we went into. I preferred the beers from NOLA Brewing including one of my favorites this weekend, Hopitoulas, along with the N’AWLINS Golden Ale from Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company which is a Mississippi brewery.
*** This house was directly across from us during the parade, how it managed to not collapse is something I will never understand. I learned that it was boarded up because a truck ran into it recently.
**** The complete set of photographs from this trip can be found on Flickr.
