Jessie Goes….

By myself now, Rob to his classes in Montgomery, and me onward to the Cresent City. 

The sights and sounds from my table at Cafe Du Monde still feel the same.  Visitors crowd every table, brushing powdered sugar off of themselves, the city anthem “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In” playing mournfully on a horn in the distance.    The sun is shining bright today, the air is cool and to me the French Quarter still looks much the same as it always has.   There are actually fewer panhandlers than I remember, but fewer street musicians too, and far fewer street vendors… there’s not one frozen man in Jackson Sq!

Cafe du Monde, by the way, has my favorite coffee on the planet.    It has a mellow, almost rooty taste, which comes from the addition of chicory to the blend.  Originally, this was ‘included’ as a cut as there was an embargo on coffee at some point in the Napoleonic era in France, and apparently in New Orleans too.  When the embargo ended, the rest of the world went back to plain ol’ coffee, where the populace of New Orleans, in must have grown on, and now they don’t want their coffee without it!  Me either.  

Just so that it doesn’t keep coming up as I write here, let me just address my impressions pre and post Katrina.   Whats different:  the French Market (voodoo market), is mostly still gone.  It looks like they are working on it and the surrounding streets, but be warned, its a bit more difficult to find your plethora of hot sauces and voodoo dolls than it used to be.  Hopefully, all the jackhammering means that it will be up and full of vendors pretty soon.  What else: there are little signs everywhere of rebuilding: a peek of scaffolding through the garden gates, a storefront with construction fencing around it.  And the back end of the quarter has become even more charmingly delapidated. But remember, that faded rotting grandeur is part of the mystique, so its not such a bad thing.  There is a reason, after all, that people associate this area with vampires.

Maybe the biggest difference is the change to the populous.  It is not unusual to see an Asian or Latino face walking down the street or showing you that pretty dress in the window.    I have always gotten the impression that this city clutched its ancestral heritage fiercely, and your stock was counted without remorse by how many generations of your line could call New Orleans, and the delta region home.  Outsiders are treated very well, but always have remained outsiders – whether from China or Texas.   Clearly this brand of self pride and community has had to rethink itself, as even now, only 330k of the cities 500k residents have returned.  Somebody needs to be doing the day to day jobs in the city to keep the place alive and well, and immigrants are coming in all shapes and sizes. New faces seem actively welcome for the first time maybe since the french commander sent for the first female residents to join the men in the region during the colonial era.    I personally view this with both a smile and a wistfulness, as diversity is great, and was probably one of the cities big problems before, but with diversity comes a watering down of what was so uniquely found in this area.    Just like everything… you can always say “ah, when back 20 years ago the place was REALLY cool”.

So, back to my whereabouts on Day 0.5 and 1 of my stay in New Orleans.    I’ll start with driving into the city, which is super simple from Pensacola, but you get dumped off of I-10 in an area with a shade of sketchiness, and then, even as familiar as I am with the city in my half dozen visits, I still got turned around and discombobulated by one way streets.    During the daylight it would have been a cinch.      As it was only about 9:30pm thanks to the time change, which Rob and I had forgotten about in Pensacola (it is so odd, driving and 5 minutes later being in a different ‘time’…somehow flights make this acceptable, but driving it is always weirder), I dropped off my bags at my hotel, the Prytania Park and went up a few blocks on the streetcar to the Columns Hotel for an outside nightcap, and an introduction to the city.    I just love this place, its this greek revival mansion on St. Charles St, where they filmed a child Brooke Shields in Little Baby, which has a great veranda, and a bar that looks like it comes out of “the Shining” repleat with tuxedo wearing bartenders.   You can actually stay here too, if you want to book far enough in advance, but I hear its haunted.  Anyhow, it was a nice cocktail, but then true exhaustion  set in and I headed the short distance back to the hotel.   Which I will recommend, by the way.   Location is so so (convenient, but not in the nice part of the garden district), but cute cute hotel in a collection of old houses, with super comfie bed. 

Aside from my brief trip to Cafe du Monde, today is my garden district/uptown day.    All I can say is that if you are a fan of beautiful neighborhoods and architecture, walking around the upper garden district is amazing.  Even after my feet hurt and back is so done, I still walk on.  It is, in my humble opinion, one of the prettiest neighborhoods in the world.. a mix of Greek revivial mansions and victorian creole shotgun cottages all surrounded by old brick sidewalks, hidden statuary, live oaks and spanish moss, and an almost unstoppable greenery which grows from every crevice.   Grand and elegant, but still accessible and real, it is home to both eccentric millionaires, and post collegiate roommates.

Wandering down Colesium St, near the cemetary full of raised crypts, everything feels ancient and slow moving.  The brick sidewalks are jostled, their herringbone pattern mangled by the tree roots fighting for the space over many decades.  The smell of the flowers, jasmine among them, is overwhelming here too – almost sickly sweet and adds to the aura of opulent rottenness that surrounds the city. 

 After 4 hours of walking around the garden districts and the shopping district at Magazine street, I hop back on the St. Charles Street Car ($1.25) and head to where St. Charles ends and the street car is about to abruptly, severely turn right, 2 minutes later I find myself in Cooter Browns, home of my favorite muffalata (yes, New Orleans is all about architecture, ghosts, vampires and food for me).  Its a sports bar, but don’t be fooled, absolutely fabulous muffalata in all its Italian cold cutty, olive tapenady goodness.  Yum Yum Yum.   I know Central Grocery in the French Quarter is supposed to be the authority, but I beg to differ.  Yum Yum Yum.  I feel almost sick.  Way too much.

 Things I did:

Columns Hotel, 3811 St. Charles Ave.  Great cocktail bar, nice porch too.

Cooter Browns Tavern & Oyster Bar. 509 S. Carollton Ave.  Muffallata goodness.

Prytania Park Hotel.  1525 Prytania St. 504-524-0427.  Inexpensive, and a bargain for what you get, like a streamlined bed and breakfast without the lace doilies, and without the breakfast.

Well, I must say the drive from Apalachicola continuing west is nowhere near as relaxed or pretty as the panhandle has been to this point. 

After a semi solid nights sleep, the dozen or so giants who must have checked into room 214 of the Nacho stompily pried me from sleep with what could have only been a continuous three legged relay race across the hotel room.   Rob was already up, so our departure from the motel was a sparkling 8am, a leftover moonpie in hand for a roadtrip style breakfast.  The giants were still busy running back and forth when we left.

It is a cool and stormy day, the opposite of yesterday.     Today, of course, the idea was to spend some time at the beach in Pensacola, and though I visited, and yes it was white sand, blue water, and completely pristinely empty, of course it was also chilly, windy and raining, so the visit was more of a 1 minute variety.

We went to see the airplanes instead.   It turns out that the Pensacola Naval Air Station has a huge museum on it containing what seemed like a hundred remade and refurbished planes, many from wrecks, reworked slowly by the servicemen that worked on them in their prime, if possible.   This base, unlike most others, is accessible by the public.  They have every type of plane imaginable, WWI, WWII, modern fighters, as well as things resembling the kitty hawk.   If you have any interest at all in aviation history or old aircraft, this is a really amazing place.  You can TOUCH these aircraft!  And as they are the real thing, you get a huge sense of how it was like to fly these things, and the relative size.  The blue angels stunt pilots, for instance, are in very tiny aircraft..where as some of those biplane kitty hawk looking things are enormous!

 They also have full sized flight simulators which allow you to try your hand a landing a plane on an aircraft carrier platform.     Finally, they have a bar there, that’s hard to describe, like a flight club, lounge with all the memorabilia to boot.  

We also visited two relatively pristine forts on base, predating the civil war.  They are very close in design to Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, only they didn’t get the crap beat out of them, so these you can walk through, and I could only imagine how fun this would be if I was 9 years old with a nerf bb gun.   These forts must have been scary things to come upon, and were cleverly designed to make it near impossible to take one of them in short order during its time.     Half fort, half bunker.   Like I said, with some nerf guns and a few people, it would make one hell of a fun time playing ‘army’.  Even now!

Places Visited:

National Naval Aviation Museum
1750 Radford Blvd., Suite C
Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL 32508
Phone: (850) 452-3604 or (850) 452-3606

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org

I’d heard many a time that the panhandle of Florida isn’t Florida in the sense of our national identity of it, as a bastion for snowbirds, northern accents, and non-southern traditions which involve hot nights, latin influences and Mickey Mouse.    The panhandle, just as I’ve been told, is southern in attitude, and Apalachicola is the little southern coastal town.       BTW, it is assigned a much larger dot on the map than its size would suggest!

Apalachicola is, at its core, a fishing village. Trawlers occupy the riverfront.   I was told there were some 40+ fishing warehouses on the river in Apalachicolas heyday, a booming seaport in Victorian times.   The architecture reflects this, with a mix of Victorian, greek revival, and the traditional southern veranda style houses.      The population was many times what it is today, as along side its busy waterfront commerce, the locals prospered in the lumber industry. 

Today, my sense is that the town has clawed itself back from tough times to create a charming small village.  There are still fishermen and their trawlers to be seen, with no doubt the backbreaking lifestyle that comes included, but there is a tourist industry here.   There still are quite a few blank storefronts in the downtown historic buildings, but there are also numerous unique shops too.   Among them, a 50s style soda fountain and knickknack store.   Rob and I missed this, but we were kicking ourselves for delaying until afterhours.    We also visited a cobbled together couple of rivershacks occupied by tons of new and old seafaring knickknacks.   Rob was in nautical heaven, with all the buoys, life rafts, charts and sea lanterns one could hope for.  It was a pretty cool store. 

Back to tourism, there was not a room to be found in the traditional Victorian inns that populate the town.  There are so many of them, and they are all booked.    The street fronting the river was hosting a classic boat show, and the town right down the coast Carabelle was having a festival of its own, so we were out of luck for the bed and breakfast or charming inn!    We ended up in the Rancho Inn, a fake adobe looking Mexican affair motel, which cost us about 30 more dollars than one of the charming inns with complementary breakfast.   Ah, well.    Rob and I, in room 114 of the “Nacho” as we affectionately called the motel, still had a great time, took a nap, watched movies into the wee hours with some snackfood from the convenience store across the street, well after Apalachicola had called it a night (11pm), and laughed at our grandious lifestyle.       Places we went worth mentioning:

We’re Off!  

In true roadtrip fashion, we leave tampa today 2 hours late, and get our early morning start at the crack of 9:30.   The general plan is to head up the SunCoast Highway, then get onto rt 19 to rt 98 until we hit Apalachicola.  We are in absolutely no rush.

The day is cloudless and gorgeous, hot and dry, and the drive is easy.  The windows are down, and NPR is on the radio; Click and Clack discussing replacing a clutch.   19 is a small highway, dotted on each side by little towns, aged reminants of a bygone era before the coming of the interstate.   The Florida coastal jungle is big here, pines and undergrowth so thick, both Rob and I were individually wondering what it must have been like for the explorers in the day who landed here looking for gold.   Daunting enough, that I imagine had they not just spent a month or so on a ship, they’d have just said, ‘to heck with it, the beach looks just fine’.    Between malaria, alligators and lack of fresh water, I imagine there are lots of explorer bones out there.

There are wildflowers everywhere, and little rotting shacks off the side of the road, most unlived in for years, but a few, in similar condition, with some parts on the porch and the signs of life emanating from within.     It is oddly, not florida.  Or anything you’d associate with the state whose real estate boom has left most of Florida with homes worth only 60% of their value a year ago.   The boom never hit here, it is rural, and poor, in an almost romantic nostalgic way.     The shacks are  quaint, the few still operating 50s style roadside motels remind me of the kid my dad must have been.    It does look like the last time this entire stretch of coast had an industry was then, when the newly minted travelers with their family cars headed down to the coast with their beachballs and buckets,  leaving behind their suburban lives for a week or two.     All romance aside, which mostly likely is only romantic because I’m passing by, I debate with myself if the locals are happy people who enjoy the simple life and pleasures, or they wile away days in quiet desperation, trapped by lack of opportunity and a decaying homeland.   It is nice to see a place not occupied by strip malls and general highway uglies though.   And this is only a few miles from the coast.  Its sort of unreal. 

Nearing Apalachicola, as we veer west onto 98, the ruralness takes on a slightly less destitute quality, and as the coast goes from 2 miles away to 1 miles away, to just beyond that clump of trees, the signs of modern America start peaking through, in the forms of recently built housing of the road overlooking the green blue ocean.    The real estate bubble is apparent too though, as many lots are cleared, and unbuilt, have foundatations, which will never be built, or houses which stand 80% constructed by empty.  Every house is for sale.     But still, on the whole, there is very little in the way of development in comparison to any other “non-state land” coast I’ve ever been on in the USA.   Its nickname “the Forgotten Coast” is appropriate. 

It was 107 degrees today here in Vegas.  It’s a dry heat, but still, 107 makes normally cool white cement scalding.   Getting to the pool past the numerous lounge chairs poolside is comic, and the bottoms of my feet are going to peel.     After a margarita or two I took to just walking across the tops of empty loungers instead of using the ground.   [read on]

The highlights from Vegas will be a little brief to protect the privacy of my girlfriends, though there are a couple of only in Vegas moments I can share: 

My schedule first morning:
Wake up 6am, get on flight.  Land in Vegas by 10am.   At Hotel by 10:15am, at pool by 10:45, beer beer beer, leave pool at 4, take nap.  Dinner, Drinks, Club.  [read on]

My plane karma, you might have noticed, has been very bad lately.   The saga continues. 

Today has been a rough one, as I had a last minute business trip planned to Philadelphia ON THE DAY that I am flying to Las Vegas for Beth’s bachelorette party.   12 girls, on the loose.    I already had my tickets and rebooking them out of Philly would cost 600 bucks. Nope. Way too cheap for that. 

As I had only 15 hours til I was going to premier in a bikini, I had to forgo Philly cheese steaks ‘whiz witout’, and had salad.  (yuk)   [read on]

From the pre-blog journal archives:

Its a funny thing about me and travel. I find often, that when I get taken with a new place, I covet it, in a wish for permanency. I want it the same way I want a beautiful new necklace, new hardwood floors or an intriguing piece of art. Yet that everyday repetitiveness of real life is the reason I start dreaming of new lives and new lands in the first place. And unfortunately, as hard as we try, you can’t take those places home with you. Marionettes, wooden spoons, brightly colored dishes and all that white and blue look a lot crappier here in the US, without those beer infused rose colored glasses perched atop my head. So, notebook, please ignore those funny bulges in my backpack. They are not marionettes. I swear. [read on]

Well, we did a three day trip to the mountains, to take advantage of ‘all that snow’.

Day one:  went to Iceface, err.. I mean Whiteface, the site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics, and theoretically, some of the best skiing this side of the Mississippi.   We managed to get to the top of the gondola, where it was blizzard winds, and honestly, I could have spread my arms at the top of the steepest slope there and never have started a descent on my snowboard, due to the windsheer. Insanely windy.     If I held my  snowboard over my head at the right angle I might have actually been able to fly…looking back, I should have tried this.  

So, finally started my decent with a little creative hopping/voodoo dancing my way toward something really steep which would counteract the windpower, only to find a nicely disguised version of the Rockefeller Center ice rink, all the way down the mountain (or at least the 10 feet of slope perpetually in front of me).   The one inch of snow on the top tricked me into falling on my butt at least two times before making it to the first lift, which brought us to the VERY top of the mountain, where the steeeeeps are.   Somehow despite laws of physics, murphy, gravity, and wind/mountain dynamics, we were hopeful that the top might be a little less icy, windy and crowded.   Ha.

I fell down about 100 feet from the top of the slope, of which I had estimated to be at least 99 feet of ice.   Then I fell again at 102 feet from the top…and I just sat there.   After a few moments I decided that this was just crap,  and I would walk down this stupid mountain, before I gave it the satisfaction of actually attempting to use it for its intended purpose.  With a huff and a growl in my boyfriend’s general direction regarding sudden hatred of this stupid mountain, I unlatched my first binding, then my second…and still complaining preceeded to stand up and take my first step down, my boyfriend, Mark, watching as well as a few other amused bystanders.    Most of which were probably still using the previously mentioned laws in their immediate action planning.   Well, turns out, a 35 degree slope totally ice, is very slippery, and I made it precisely 1/2 step before falling full body on the slope, legs in the air, and sliding a good ten feet.    Stupid mountain.

Well, suffice it to say me and my ego had to snowboard down, as, realistically, we were 3.6 miles from the bottom, which hadn’t occur to me mid-tantrum, and walking was going to be more painful and time consuming than I had at first imagined.

I felt better though that Dorothy Hamill (aka Mark with a smug, “I’ve got skis on and I am laughing at you, because ice is my specialty” look on his face)  got his skis run over by one of those crazy little kid skiers on the way down, and the smug look was no longer with him by the time we reached the bottom.    He was so pissed that we took off our gear and just left.
Mark tells me we are not going to “Ice-pop” again.  Ever.

Oh, did I tell you that Dorothy Hamill got his first speeding ticket in a decade, on the way to Ice-pop that morning?  Heh heh.   A 6 pointer… we should have known then. 

Day 2-3:  Home Mountain, fresh powder, all is well again.    No crowds, no ice, no ski tantrums, no speeding tickets.   Today I had my best board day ever.  Went bombing down a couple of expert runs, looking like I knew what I was doing.     Which is practically better than actually knowing what you are doing.

Cheers, Jess (aka Tonya Harding)