15 November 1998: New Orleans

We flew to New Orleans on Wednesday for RDC to present at SC-MLA, South-Central Modern Languages Association, on Friday and stayed at the Canal Street Radisson. That hotel, with its uniformed staff and room service, was by far the best hotel I've ever been in. No robes hung in the closet, but that closet did enclose an ironing board and iron. Our 18th-floor view was of the roof of Tulane Medical Center and the business district. The city's tallest buildings stand in the once-English now-American quarter, along the streets closest to the French quarter; beyond them we saw hints of the river.

As soon as we arrived and changed, we walked down Canal Street to the French Quarter. I recently bought a lovely dress of an odd hue, a tawny salmon, in a heavy linen, and I wore that: for this vacation, I dressed up. Several years ago, CLH bought me a cashmere shawl from Florence, but I rarely have occasion to wear it. This was one. The dress has a high waist, which first made me dubious, and the skirt hangs, kind of like a sarong, from the waist seam; in a high wind or when running this can be tricky. Canal Street wasn't breezy that afternoon.

Our first stop was a restaurant named Desire on Bourbon Street, in a building of the usual, lovely architectural style of the French Quarter, buildings covered with stucco and gardens hidden in patios. And people indulge the small spaces they inhabit, gardening in pots and watching the foot traffic from their balconies. I had Oysters Desire, which consisted of baking them with a cheesy-bread crumb roux type thing, and RDC had his raw, which I cannot bring myself to try.

The French Quarter presumably has been overrun by America: a restaurant we ambled past advertised its rouxes. We strolled and browsed and admired along the River Walk, along the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is described as being too thick to drink and too thin to plow, which is a good description. In New Orleans, a hundred miles from its delta, it was not as wide as I expected, but I think people have built a lot of piers and things to create shipping channels. We then ate supper at Remoulade back on Bourbon Street. "Remoulade" in New Orleans means a spicy French mustard; in France it means something else. But no one in the French Quarter knew what that might be. Overrun by America indeed.

We had been warned not to walk on Canal Street after dark, so that night we took the first of our New Orleans taxis back to the hotel. A doorman changed a five so I could tip the cabbie but I gaffed by not giving a fifth of the change to the doorman. Uniformed service indeed.

Thursday we walked down Canal to St. Charles and took the St. Charles Streetcar through the American Quarter out to the Garden District. I believe I shamed myself by continually calling these conveyances "cable cars" instead of "streetcars." My heart belongs to San Francisco. We saw beautiful mansions in the Garden District, with quite pretty gardens considering it was November. I wore a lavender dress DMB bought for me in Vail this summer. I adore wearing it for walking excursions because I consider its swirly full skirt Romantic with a Capital R.

We explored Lafayette Cemetery, which like all New Orleans cemeteries uses mausoleums instead of burial. There is too much flooding to inter coffins. I enjoy piecing together genealogies and family histories in graveyards, and so we did that for a while. Because mausoleums are so expensive, I think families must have shared them or something, because almost every one had more than one last name on it. One was very sad: there were lots of dates in August of 1874 and one had the dates and ages of four children who must have been just one family's offspring. The inscription mentions yellow fever.

In our wanderings, we passed a restaurant whose name had been recommended to us as one of the best in town, the Commander's Palace, a large Victorian mansion with a jungle for a garden. We made a reservation then, on Thursday, for Friday supper, and the solicitous service we enjoyed just placing the reservation was some indication of what was in store for Friday. The only spot they had left was 9:30, and take it as a good sign for a restaurant if it is that much in demand--except that this was Thursday already and I guess November is tourist season.

One typical New Orleans foodstuff is a sandwich they call a po-boy. It is mostly a grinder or hoagie but comes on a specific type of soft French bread and always comes dressed with lettuce tomato and mayonnaise, no more and no less. We had oyster po-boys for lunch and so for dinner we were hungry only for appetizers. After more wandering in the French Quarter, we settled--because it was in the last street before the River--on a French restaurant that looked a little more formal than our budget would allow. Because we only wanted a little to eat, though, we indulged. Vacation and all.

After we asked to be seated for appetizers only, the manager tucked us behind the bar (the dining room was perhaps a third filled) and took our order himself so that no waitstaff should be stiffed. Despite their misapprehension, the food they served us was exquisite--as were all our New Orleans meals--and the service itself subtly attentive. I really like being waited on. I had a duck and oyster gumbo and RDC a seafood gumbo, and then I had another baked oyster dish, which involved but a seafood stuffing. It was a little too hot for my New England-inured palate, but I could tell it was really yummy under the heat. RDC thought it was great.

On Friday the 13^th the conference began. RDC needed to rehearse his paper and go to the conference, so I went alone to the Aquarium of the Americas. That aquarium is the most diverse I have seen. It has a coral reef tank made into an arch, so you can watch the fish swim over your head. From the outside, you can see a tall glass column at one corner, five or six storeys high, and that contains a rainforest. I saw iguanas and boa constrictors and rainforest fish and frogs, and then I made friends with the parrots. I went to an aquarium and my favorite exhibit was not fish but birds. I'm helpless. So I flirted with a hyacinth macaw, a bird three feet long from beak to tail and a deep lapis lazuli color all over, with yellow around its eyes and along its beak. Really gorgeous.

Hyacinths can snap Brazil nuts, those triangular or trapezoid nuts, the way we shell peas and are hugely intelligent. So he flirted with me, pointing his eyes (they have voluntary control over their pupil dilation, and indicate interest or attention by "pointing" or constricting their pupils) and showing off his shoulders and stretching himself out horizontally begging to be pet. I restrained myself, what with his large beak and our lack of proper introduction and its being forbidden and all. I was pretty sure it was a male because it did flirt, and when I came back later a handler was with them, feeding them and petting them, and I asked which was which. My suitor was indeed the male.

In between flirtations I saw an IMAX movie about the Serengeti. A screen ten times the regular size is only slightly less profane a canvas than television for such a subject. The movie was beautiful, narrated by James Earl Jones, who played the voice of the father lion in "The Lion King." Besides that he is a fitting narrator anyway with his resonant baritone, the producers must have had Disney in mind. The opening scene splits the screen horizontally at the center, opening on a panorama of wildebeest running, galloping, stampeding--but not to see Simba presented to the animal kingdom. I've not seen "The Lion King" and plan not to, but still the IMAX reminded me of it.

I hope the governments of Kenya and Tanzania, realizing tourism brings more funds than poaching, continue to protect this land. The whole of the Serengiti used to be a volcanic field, which is why the soil is so rich and the land able to support so much life. One volcanic crater still exists, long extinct and worn down enough to form a protected valley that humans have never settled. It is untouched. You can take a balloon ride over it, and this I want to do more than anything else, even more than I want a castle tour of Europe.

And I saw an exhibit on jellyfish that gave me the shivers, and another on sharks, and another on the Mississippi, where I got to pet a king snake named Ramona. I also saw a bald eagle named Murlock--no one knew how it got that name--that the aquarium saved after it lost a wing to human stupidity. I asked the exhibitor if Ramona the snake was a pest, and she was surprised. Apparently I'm the only adult ever to have guessed that. (I hope that is only because it's a young snake so the public hasn't had years to be so stupid.) I asked how all the animals got their names--Lapis and Lazuli for the hyacinths were obvious--because I like to know how things earn their names or are given them.

After RDC presented, it was supper time. Our reservation at Commander's was for 9:30, giving me much time to primp. May I say again how I love being able to dress up. And off we went. Having arrived a little early, we waited for our table in the bar, which overlooked a rainy patio and another garden jungle. Then instead of loudly speaking our name over an intercom, a waiter came up to us to ask if we were the Caccavale party. The maitre d' must have noted a description when we came in. More good service! Then the waiter and led us to our table, and seated me, and laid our napkins in our laps. Goodness.

I had Oysters Bienville--lots of oysters on this trip--and Rich had a gumbo with truffles. Then I had pheasant and Rich had quail. I hadn't had pheasant since I was little, since RSH, I think, shot one with Sagi. I remember a bird hanging from the clothesline by its wings. I'll have to ask Dad if that's a real memory. Rich ordered their bread pudding soufflé, their signature dessert, and I opted for a chocolate raspberry tart, the dessert of champions. Bread pudding is nasty in itself, but to combine it with eggs, which I despise, into a soufflé? Blecch. But RDC thought it was pretty good. Throughout the entire meal we had exquisite service.

Saturday we took the bus to the city park and walked through it to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The Museum is a quite good one for its size and possesses a whole roomful of Fabergé. The Fabergé collection included three Imperial Easter eggs and lots of flowers made of jewels. One egg was a six-inch wonder has a tiny little mechanical train running end to end, to commemorate the year Russia completed the Trans-Siberian railroad. Another has a jointed set of miniature portraits painted on ivory. The flowers had leaves of jade, with veins, and diamond pistils. He was so meticulous that there is never a question of what species of flower a piece might be.

And it was pouring when we left at 5:00 so we rang for a taxi. This illustrated the personal efficiency of taxiing vs. the environmental and social efficiency of bussing. I thought the 25-minute bus ride would mean a long cab fare, but no. The taxi ride took about seven minutes. So as much as I enjoyed the personal service, cabs can't be more than occasional indulgences. Public transportation makes much more sense.

Sunday we tried to motivate early enough to go to a famous café, the Café du Monde, for breakfast, but we failed to get there ahead of the masses, so we ate nearby and I had fantastic French toast with the New Orleans sort of French bread. Then we strolled through the French market, where we found a cookbook of the Commander's Palace with a whole history of the place plus a discussion of Cajun vs. Creole. Now RDC wants to make a Creole Thanksgiving.

From the Unclear on the Concept department:
Coming out of the airport heading for the shuttle to bring us to the remote parking lot, I heard a man wheedle, "But the shuttle's supposed to come to the west side of the airport. How're we supposed to know which is the west side?" Silently, I extended my arm westward, away from the airport, pointing to the sun setting over the mountains.