New Orleans (1).

We walked around the French Quarter yesterday, and took in a lot. We started by walking down Bourbon Street, all the way down to Canal Street. It was full of lights and busy signs, as well as old houses built in the French colonial style.

We decided to go check out St. Peter's Cemetery #1 and #2. Some of the graves are more than three-hundred years old, and there are people from Spanish, French, Creole, British, and American backgrounds buried there. The graves are mostly above ground and have fallen into a state of disrepair. However, given the warm humid air and the age of many of the tombs, this makes sense. The light and angles in the cemeteries were great, and some of the inscriptions were fascinating.

From the cemeteries, we walked back into the French Quarter to get lunch at Coop's. We ate some traditional Creole cuisine, which was fantastic. I had a bit of everything, from shrimp gumbo to jumbalaya to rice and beans. It was all delicious. We washed it down with some Abita beer, the local New Orleans brew.

After lunch, we walked around a bit. Then Rhoda went to put her feet up for while and I walked around the streets and saw what I could see. Around 5:00 or so, we went to Brennan's for a glass of wine. A loud dunderhead was sitting at the table near us and prattling on about Wall Street this and that, so we decided to eat dinner somewhere else. We walked around bit more and saw Louis Armstrong Park. We ended up at Port of Call, where we had beer and hamburgers. It was really good.

We went back to the hotel for a few minutes after dinner, and then we walked over to Snug Harbor, which bills itself as "New Orleans' Premier Jazz Club." We saw a sextet from the Thelonius Monk Institue, and they were really, really good. Highlights: the interaction between the saxophone players and the trumpet player; the look of bliss on the pianist's face; the tight drumming; the incredible dexterity of the bassist; and the French woman to my right who nodded off and slept through the first half of the set. All in all, it was a great show.

It was late when we got back, so we hit the sack more or less immediately. Today we plan to walk around a bit more, and then go check out the Ninth Ward.