The Other Side

Today I’m going to write about our tour of the 9^th Ward and St. Bernard Parish as well as a little bit about Southern Decadence 2006.

Our last day in New Orleans, our friends that live there drove us through the 9^th Ward and St. Bernard parish. We have heard much about these sites over the year following Katrina, but we wanted to see for ourselves. Though just over a year ago it was a thriving middle working class community, today the 9^th Ward looks like it has been abandoned for years. Everywhere you look there are foundations but no homes, or there are homes clumped together with no foundations. Often, you can see cars or trucks sticking out from underneath houses. The devastation is mind boggling. The shear magnitude of the destruction is much more dramatic than what a 30 second drive by a news team to be used as filler for the evening news can really convey. While there are a few homes scattered throughout this area where the homes are fairly intact and the families have returned to try and rebuild, the majority of what you can see is not quite as uplifting. Read the rest of this entry »

After several months of no days off other than weekends and July 4th, we headed to New Orleans today for a long weekend. I thought the blog might be a good place to answer the questions that people have been asking that know I was coming. It seems everyone wants a firsthand observation of what the city is like, post Katrina, without the media bias. I’ll do my best to convey what I saw during my visit.

A little background, I’ve been coming to New Orleans at least once a year since about 1995. I love my trips here–the city has so much character which makes it very endearing. Some of the finest food I have ever eaten was done right here in New Orleans, both in the quarter as well as other places like downtown or the Garden District. Many of the best known chefs in the country either got their start in the Big Easy or have built their own little empire there. So it should really come as no surprise that when I head here every Labor Day, my taste buds are tingling from the time I make my flight arrangements until I arrive. My annual Labor Day trek was interrupted in 2004 due to a hurricane hitting Orlando that weekend and I didn’t want to leave the house unprotected in case there was damage. In 2005, of course, was Katrina so I stayed home that year as well. I’m very glad that this year the weather has cooperated and we arrived as planned.

So, flying into MSY, things looked pretty much like they always have, however you can see lots of heavy equipment around the levies and pumping stations. The blue tarps were scattered about the city as you can see on this photo out the window of the plane. Once on the ground, it was obvious that the airport wasn’t as busy as holiday weekends we have travelled into the city in the past. Which does remind me, when we booked the hotel room about a month before our trip, prices were great and every hotel seemed to have rooms available. A couple of years ago, booking less than three months out would mean getting stuck with something outside of the Quarter, and for the prime locations right in the heart of things, one needed to book several months early. Not this year, however. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever reach a point when you know you just need to get away from it all for a little while? When you feel like one more little thing might set you off just due to the day to day stress of things? I feel like that right now. This summer has been a mixed bag. It started out pretty great and we had friends come visit for a few days. We fixed up somethings around the house that had been neglected and things were looking pretty good. Then a very important project, as I’ll call it, came up at work and everything has been non-stop stress since then.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind some stress and for the most part I enjoy my job, but there does need to be some balance in there somewhere. I’m not sure exactly why we let it get to this point, but I don’t think I’m alone in this. In a case like this, it’s just part of doing what needs to be done. In addition, we’ve got several trips planned between now and when we get more vacation time, so I’m trying to conserve what I have left. It’s always nice to have a few extra days left over when the holidays roll around.

So, I need to get away, plain and simple. Next trip, New Orleans, the Big Easy, home of great Jazz and even better food. It’s been three years since I’ve been there and I’m anxious to get back for some authentic Cajun and Creole food. Yum! Now that I think about it, it seems like a lot of my vacations and trips are planned around food. Oh well, there are worse things to live for!