Let the good times roll (or whatever may be rolling instead).
Last week's post had two striking characteristics, both begining with an L : it came Late and it was Long. So today, I'm gonna try to write an S one: Short and on Schedule. Hey, I just said I was gonna TRY, okay?
After a pretty long day of roadkills along highway 59 South, a late lunch at Tracy's trucks' kitchen ("we serve real food!") and a very very huge bridge over brown troubled waters, a pinkish beautiful sunset welcomed us in New Orleans, Louisiana. But you already know about that. We made our way through a light traffic on I-10 West, then I-90 West, then South Claiborne Ave, until this lovely neighborhood they call Uptown. It’s interesting how their concepts of Up- and Down- town, of south and north and east and west are a bit different from the conventional ones in the rest of the world... doesn't matter, one has to get used to it and it's no big deal. We drive slowly along some dozens of similar blocks of lovely little bright colour painted wooden houses with a thin stripe of lawn, and a bunch of stairs climbing to the porch with rocking chairs and plants. The lazy cats and the rusty cars peacefully share the street in front of every house. A couple of odd oil lamps (sometimes modernly replaced by some electric ones) bizarrely hang on each side of the front door, unvariably lit all day and night. Probably a friendly welcome to some possible visitors. My guess... So, in a comfortable space the cats left free for us, we parked the car right in front of Rachel's house. She was our first Couchsurfer in town, and was supposed to be waiting for us for dinner. She has this lovely little home, painted in surprisingly nice and unexpected wall colors, different in each room: chocolate and beige in the living-room, bright lime green in her room, salmonish in the guestroom, cannot remember which colour was the kitchen... as you have to cross both rooms to go from the living to the kitchen, if you run a little it's like a rainbow on your retina and on the whole, it's pretty cosy. After a warm CS style welcome and the classic questions "where you from, first time in the US, oh really, how do you like it so far, exactly, what do you do for a living, how long have you been on Couchsurfing", we cooked together (delicious tulapia in home-made marinade with quinoa and raisins) and spent half the night chatting with her and her boyfriend Jeme, a charming, hilarious and goofily brilliant mathematician and computer geek who happened to be our next Couchsurfing host's flatmate! Not only is the world not so big, but it is also really small... Anyway, they both gave us a lot of ideas and tips to discover the city, some what to do, some where to go, many where and what to eat, plus thousands of anecdotes about computers, maths, softwares, Microsoft, Facebook and the internet in general...
The next morning, left Rachel's and took a street car, those old-fashioned rusty tramways whose slow motion and ringing bell seem to give the pace to the wandering tourists as well as the crowd of street musicians. For New Orleans seems to be a city of tourists and street musicians. Got down in the French Quarter, had a coffee and some french beignets at famous Café du monde, a local equivalent of Parisian brasserie Lip or Globe, or Café Zurich in Barcelona, while listening to a small fanfare playing the very standards with snare and tom, trumpet, trombone and this bass brass thing I call a tuba and they call something else. Anyway. Along the streets, everything are artists’ paintings of jazz musicians and caricatures in the plus pure tradition de Montmartre and la Rambla. Everybody’s selling pseudo crafts and souvenirs, tee-shirts, caps and hats, crap jewelry and all the key holders and magnets you can imagine (Yep Edu! I got one for your fridge ;p). Plus all the cajun, creole, spicy, acid, bitter, sweet, super strong, tahiti, cuban, alligator, chili and french bottled sauces. For gastronomy is a market too, you’ll find no store without cooking books, cooking chefs, cooking stuff and cooking lessons. Somebody said ChiangMai? Well, it’s same same but... different!
The architecture in the French Quarter, and in the rest of town, had this je-ne-sais-quoi-de-désuet (already said so, right) and somehow decadent, vieillot but with le charme d'antan. The wooden and colorful tiny shop houses reminded me of old colonial Melacca and Georgetown and had me back in Malaysia for a moment... Many art galleries, many antiquités and thrift stores, many many restaurants and bars and cafes with the local spécialités: alligator meat balls, po' boys fried oyster sandwiches, fried shrimps with onion rings and the king of all Nola’s food : the gumbo. The gumbo is a kind of fish and seafood soup with rice, made of a roux brun with alcohol, butter and shrimps. The result is surprisingly dark, brown and hot, with a petit air de déja vu for anyone who ever experienced a good paella. People are nice, smilling, speaking a delicious and exotic americano del sur, with grammar and lexical adaptations from the french cajun and creole. Spent the evening around the French Quarter, trying to get lost in Bourbon St., Toulouse St., Chartres St. or Bordeaux St., talking with a nice blind old hippy who looked quite like Janis Joplin. She wore round glasses and long grey hair, was in her early seventies and happened not to be totally blind... She told us about how Nola was being abandoned and forgotten by the rest of the country. How successive governments and Obama, despite of his promises, were doing nothing at all for them. How NGO and volunteers and a bunch of true New Orleans lovers were the only reason why the city still stood on her feet. Or better said on her knees. She told us about how life was difficult and how expensive the bills had been in the last few years: people not recovering yet after Kathrina, many of them leaving the city to go anywhere else. Then the gigantic, tragic oil spill (wonder whether you heard about that in Europe: it began about 10 days ago and is getting worse everyday) in the gulf of mexico, threatening the fragile ecosystems of the marshes and swamps. And the hurricane season on its way again, already... She left us a bit confused and depressed, but you don't travel to just have fun and drink cheap booze, right? Or do you? Or do you pay to go to Disneyworld and believe the world is doing alright? Checked for the expensive fruits and decided not to "do the groceries" - to speak local - at the french market. Then waited for the sunset along the Mississipi bank, hoping to see like Ike and Tina used to sing, if big wheels kept on turning, and Proud Mary kept on burnin'...
We began the night in Frenchmen St., where we had some delicious appetizers at Adolfo's, a tiny italian restaurant on the first floor of an old little street house. Then a swing concert at the Spotted Cat, a music bar just as tiny as the restaurant. It was crowded and a few euphoric couples even managed to dance. Went back walking until a miraculous streetcar picked us, et là pour le coup, ce fut plutôt du Swing low sweet charriot, coming for to carry me home... At home, we find Jeme and Rachel talking in the livingroom, in those little hours, with a tea and a fan, and we joined them for a while, and helped them finish the tea.
The next day, took the car to a peripheral neighborhood, far East. One of the most devastated by the hurricane, where less than a 25% of the people were still living in their houses. Were supposed to meet there a dude called Floppy, friend of this guy named Grumbles (or Grumppers or was that Frumbers?) we met at Climate Ground Zero in West Virginia. For the last 20 years, Floppy has been running an ancient school bus transformed in a nomadic kitchen where he prepares and serves food for anybody who needs to eat. In the post-Kathrina disaster, he settled his "Everybody's Kitchen" in the heart of falling apart New Orleans and has been running it there so far. A small group of vounteers take their morning or afternoon 6 hour shifts to cook and serve free warm meals 5 days a week in a few missions in Nola. Due to an approximative list of instructions to get there and a bridge closed for works, we arrived late for cooking but just on time to wash the huge pans and faitouts, load the pickup and go serve lunch downtown. After running out of chili and rice, we headed back to the bus to do the dishes, have a coffee with the whole team and go with them to a farmers' community organic garden to leave the compost of the week... The school bus is totally green, with solar panels on the roof, two 90 gallons tanks for white and grey waters, fully equipped to store and recycle waste and garbage. Plus it's painted in a fancy bright orange. A beautiful volunteer project, run by an incredibly peaceful and humble, commited cook and driver. We then drove back to Jeme's place where we met his flatmates before taking bicycles to go with him to a small park. There, we flew kites between a railroad track and the bank of the Mississippi until sunset. Red, golden and blue skies and the bell of the old rail crossing road, and the trees and fat squirrels and the acute, nervous buzzing vibration of the kites in the night breeze coming up from the greasy fresh water... Had a late dinner at Jacques Imo's, one of the best restaurants in town (and for a reason!), with an impressive menu of fusion Cajun and creative food. Tried the quiche of alligator sausage and shrimps, the young spinach salad with fried oysters, the catfish in Cajun sauce with sweet potatoes fries and the vegetarian delight, sort of a Thai green veggies curry served with smoked cabbage and greens. Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!
Next morning, under a light rain which turned into a flood as the day went on, we took the car to go and visit the Cajun country and the bayous, on the way to Lafayette. Nothing but marshes and swamps on both sides of the road, under this grey humid pressure cooker. We had lunch in front of the gulf of Mexico, staring at the shrimp fisher boats smoking their way in and out the pier. Huge heavy famelic dinosaur bridges and gigantic rusty cargos and tankers, ninetinth century factories and plants and some small lovely little towns with franco-hispano ancient names... Finally didn't make it to Lafayette nor to Baton Rouge because the rain got really wild and crazy. We u-turned and headed back home, passing through the old abandonned houses and cabins of some cotton plantations, remembering those pages of our not-so-far history and heritage. The south is a wonderful and peaceful place, but bears sleeping memories that need not to be forgotten. After warm shower and with dry clothes on, we had another nice night home with Jeme and Rachel, plus Casey, Rob and Nina, the other flatmates who happen to be all three brothers and sister. Had dinner all together then played games, two of which I'll take back home to renew the fever and passion of the jungle speed nights!
On Sunday morning, Laura received a call from her parents and due to a familial unexpected issue, had to come back to New York immediately. Too long a ride to do alone in a car: we packed everything, said goodbye to our New Orleans new friends and got on the road. 32 hours and 1300 miles later, we were in New-York, where she'd have to be for the following week or so. I took a night silverish greyhound bus to Montreal yesterday and here I am, Wednesday at noon, in charming french speaking (free) Quebec! That's all folks. Take care. Lots of love from Montreal!
Last week's post had two striking characteristics, both begining with an L : it came Late and it was Long. So today, I'm gonna try to write an S one: Short and on Schedule. Hey, I just said I was gonna TRY, okay?
After a pretty long day of roadkills along highway 59 South, a late lunch at Tracy's trucks' kitchen ("we serve real food!") and a very very huge bridge over brown troubled waters, a pinkish beautiful sunset welcomed us in New Orleans, Louisiana. But you already know about that. We made our way through a light traffic on I-10 West, then I-90 West, then South Claiborne Ave, until this lovely neighborhood they call Uptown. It’s interesting how their concepts of Up- and Down- town, of south and north and east and west are a bit different from the conventional ones in the rest of the world... doesn't matter, one has to get used to it and it's no big deal. We drive slowly along some dozens of similar blocks of lovely little bright colour painted wooden houses with a thin stripe of lawn, and a bunch of stairs climbing to the porch with rocking chairs and plants. The lazy cats and the rusty cars peacefully share the street in front of every house. A couple of odd oil lamps (sometimes modernly replaced by some electric ones) bizarrely hang on each side of the front door, unvariably lit all day and night. Probably a friendly welcome to some possible visitors. My guess... So, in a comfortable space the cats left free for us, we parked the car right in front of Rachel's house. She was our first Couchsurfer in town, and was supposed to be waiting for us for dinner. She has this lovely little home, painted in surprisingly nice and unexpected wall colors, different in each room: chocolate and beige in the living-room, bright lime green in her room, salmonish in the guestroom, cannot remember which colour was the kitchen... as you have to cross both rooms to go from the living to the kitchen, if you run a little it's like a rainbow on your retina and on the whole, it's pretty cosy. After a warm CS style welcome and the classic questions "where you from, first time in the US, oh really, how do you like it so far, exactly, what do you do for a living, how long have you been on Couchsurfing", we cooked together (delicious tulapia in home-made marinade with quinoa and raisins) and spent half the night chatting with her and her boyfriend Jeme, a charming, hilarious and goofily brilliant mathematician and computer geek who happened to be our next Couchsurfing host's flatmate! Not only is the world not so big, but it is also really small... Anyway, they both gave us a lot of ideas and tips to discover the city, some what to do, some where to go, many where and what to eat, plus thousands of anecdotes about computers, maths, softwares, Microsoft, Facebook and the internet in general...
The next morning, left Rachel's and took a street car, those old-fashioned rusty tramways whose slow motion and ringing bell seem to give the pace to the wandering tourists as well as the crowd of street musicians. For New Orleans seems to be a city of tourists and street musicians. Got down in the French Quarter, had a coffee and some french beignets at famous Café du monde, a local equivalent of Parisian brasserie Lip or Globe, or Café Zurich in Barcelona, while listening to a small fanfare playing the very standards with snare and tom, trumpet, trombone and this bass brass thing I call a tuba and they call something else. Anyway. Along the streets, everything are artists’ paintings of jazz musicians and caricatures in the plus pure tradition de Montmartre and la Rambla. Everybody’s selling pseudo crafts and souvenirs, tee-shirts, caps and hats, crap jewelry and all the key holders and magnets you can imagine (Yep Edu! I got one for your fridge ;p). Plus all the cajun, creole, spicy, acid, bitter, sweet, super strong, tahiti, cuban, alligator, chili and french bottled sauces. For gastronomy is a market too, you’ll find no store without cooking books, cooking chefs, cooking stuff and cooking lessons. Somebody said ChiangMai? Well, it’s same same but... different!
The architecture in the French Quarter, and in the rest of town, had this je-ne-sais-quoi-de-désuet (already said so, right) and somehow decadent, vieillot but with le charme d'antan. The wooden and colorful tiny shop houses reminded me of old colonial Melacca and Georgetown and had me back in Malaysia for a moment... Many art galleries, many antiquités and thrift stores, many many restaurants and bars and cafes with the local spécialités: alligator meat balls, po' boys fried oyster sandwiches, fried shrimps with onion rings and the king of all Nola’s food : the gumbo. The gumbo is a kind of fish and seafood soup with rice, made of a roux brun with alcohol, butter and shrimps. The result is surprisingly dark, brown and hot, with a petit air de déja vu for anyone who ever experienced a good paella. People are nice, smilling, speaking a delicious and exotic americano del sur, with grammar and lexical adaptations from the french cajun and creole. Spent the evening around the French Quarter, trying to get lost in Bourbon St., Toulouse St., Chartres St. or Bordeaux St., talking with a nice blind old hippy who looked quite like Janis Joplin. She wore round glasses and long grey hair, was in her early seventies and happened not to be totally blind... She told us about how Nola was being abandoned and forgotten by the rest of the country. How successive governments and Obama, despite of his promises, were doing nothing at all for them. How NGO and volunteers and a bunch of true New Orleans lovers were the only reason why the city still stood on her feet. Or better said on her knees. She told us about how life was difficult and how expensive the bills had been in the last few years: people not recovering yet after Kathrina, many of them leaving the city to go anywhere else. Then the gigantic, tragic oil spill (wonder whether you heard about that in Europe: it began about 10 days ago and is getting worse everyday) in the gulf of mexico, threatening the fragile ecosystems of the marshes and swamps. And the hurricane season on its way again, already... She left us a bit confused and depressed, but you don't travel to just have fun and drink cheap booze, right? Or do you? Or do you pay to go to Disneyworld and believe the world is doing alright? Checked for the expensive fruits and decided not to "do the groceries" - to speak local - at the french market. Then waited for the sunset along the Mississipi bank, hoping to see like Ike and Tina used to sing, if big wheels kept on turning, and Proud Mary kept on burnin'...
We began the night in Frenchmen St., where we had some delicious appetizers at Adolfo's, a tiny italian restaurant on the first floor of an old little street house. Then a swing concert at the Spotted Cat, a music bar just as tiny as the restaurant. It was crowded and a few euphoric couples even managed to dance. Went back walking until a miraculous streetcar picked us, et là pour le coup, ce fut plutôt du Swing low sweet charriot, coming for to carry me home... At home, we find Jeme and Rachel talking in the livingroom, in those little hours, with a tea and a fan, and we joined them for a while, and helped them finish the tea.
The next day, took the car to a peripheral neighborhood, far East. One of the most devastated by the hurricane, where less than a 25% of the people were still living in their houses. Were supposed to meet there a dude called Floppy, friend of this guy named Grumbles (or Grumppers or was that Frumbers?) we met at Climate Ground Zero in West Virginia. For the last 20 years, Floppy has been running an ancient school bus transformed in a nomadic kitchen where he prepares and serves food for anybody who needs to eat. In the post-Kathrina disaster, he settled his "Everybody's Kitchen" in the heart of falling apart New Orleans and has been running it there so far. A small group of vounteers take their morning or afternoon 6 hour shifts to cook and serve free warm meals 5 days a week in a few missions in Nola. Due to an approximative list of instructions to get there and a bridge closed for works, we arrived late for cooking but just on time to wash the huge pans and faitouts, load the pickup and go serve lunch downtown. After running out of chili and rice, we headed back to the bus to do the dishes, have a coffee with the whole team and go with them to a farmers' community organic garden to leave the compost of the week... The school bus is totally green, with solar panels on the roof, two 90 gallons tanks for white and grey waters, fully equipped to store and recycle waste and garbage. Plus it's painted in a fancy bright orange. A beautiful volunteer project, run by an incredibly peaceful and humble, commited cook and driver. We then drove back to Jeme's place where we met his flatmates before taking bicycles to go with him to a small park. There, we flew kites between a railroad track and the bank of the Mississippi until sunset. Red, golden and blue skies and the bell of the old rail crossing road, and the trees and fat squirrels and the acute, nervous buzzing vibration of the kites in the night breeze coming up from the greasy fresh water... Had a late dinner at Jacques Imo's, one of the best restaurants in town (and for a reason!), with an impressive menu of fusion Cajun and creative food. Tried the quiche of alligator sausage and shrimps, the young spinach salad with fried oysters, the catfish in Cajun sauce with sweet potatoes fries and the vegetarian delight, sort of a Thai green veggies curry served with smoked cabbage and greens. Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!
On Sunday morning, Laura received a call from her parents and due to a familial unexpected issue, had to come back to New York immediately. Too long a ride to do alone in a car: we packed everything, said goodbye to our New Orleans new friends and got on the road. 32 hours and 1300 miles later, we were in New-York, where she'd have to be for the following week or so. I took a night silverish greyhound bus to Montreal yesterday and here I am, Wednesday at noon, in charming french speaking (free) Quebec! That's all folks. Take care. Lots of love from Montreal!
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