Day 58

Day 58: 7/14/15 (New Orleans)

45 miles

This morning, we knew we wouldn’t be leaving early because the plan was to Skype with Jillian’s sister while she was visiting the apartments.  We enjoyed a nice breakfast while we waited and around 10:30am we finally started getting some pictures and video of the place.  She walked us through the whole apartment and we were able to ask a few extra questions.  We weren’t super thrilled with the place, but it wasn’t terrible.  The second apartment seemed nicer with a better kitchen, but someone had already applied for it and, if everything worked out, they were going to be signing the next day.  After seeing both apartments, Chelsea thought both were alright, but Jillian’s mom didn’t like either.  We had been searching for a month so it was disappointing to hear that neither of the apartments were all that great.

Shortly after they finished viewing the apartments, we headed into the city to eat at Dooky Chase, Leah Chase’s restaurant.  She is an icon of New Orleans cuisine and has been running the restaurant since 1941 and is still in the restaurant for short periods of time at 92 years old!  Anne ordered a couple of sides, but we both did the lunch buffet.  There was some pickled vegetables, rice and red beans, fried chicken, mac and cheese, green beans, mustard greens, boudin, and pork.  We also got a vegetable soup and a bread pudding dessert.  We definitely left with full bellies.  From there we drove around the lower 9^th ward district which was one of the areas that faced the most damage from Hurricane Katrina.  Ten years later, it seems that most house have been restored and replaced.  There are still a few that are abandoned and dilapidated, but for the most part it seemed in pretty good shape.

Next we went downtown and parked by the French Market again.  We walked around trying to find the other praline shops that we had looked up.  We made sure to grab some samples so we could compare them all.  Aunt Sally’s shop had a chewier, more caramel-like praline that was pretty good, but everything was prepacked so it didn’t seem as fresh as all the others.  We picked up a rum praline at Leah’s which has a pretty distinct taste, but not one that either of us cared for.  Loretta’s was our last stop which was a part of the French Market and we just tried a sample because it didn’t seem like that had any left.  We walked through the rest of the market checking out all of the vendor stalls.  Towards the end we came upon a table with photographs printed on aluminum that were vibrant and caught our eyes.  We ended up picking out three 5x7-sized photos that we think will hang well next to each other.  We were excited to finally find some art that we liked and could afford.

We spent the rest of our day on St Charles Street.  We drove along it to see all the mansions and old architecture.  Anne pointed out a neighborhood where all the millionaires lived, but it was gated off so we could drive around it.  As we looped back, we found Superior Seafood which has a killer oyster happy hour – raw oysters for $0.50 each!  Anne ordered a half dozen of raw oysters and we ordered a half dozen of a few different styles of cooked oysters to share.  The oysters there were huge!  Our cooked ones weren’t too bad, but we still like the chargrilled ones at Acme the best.  Anne let us try a couple of her raw oysters which was quite the experience.  Surprisingly, they weren’t that bad.  Rico had one on a cracker with hot cocktail sauce, but Jillian just squeezed some lemon and slurped it from the shell.  We definitely had some questionable faces during the first few bites, but we both ended up enjoying them.  Now we’ll just have to compare the Gulf oysters to the Atlantic ones back home.  Once we were finished, we walked quite a few blocks to Mahoney’s which is a po boy place that was featured on Diners, Drive ins, and Dives.  We already knew we wanted to order the peacemaker po boy which had fried oysters and bacon in it.  We took it to go and walked back to the car.  Once we got home we dove into our sandwich and it was so good.  Definitely a better experience than the first po boy we tried – but I guess everything’s better with bacon right?  We spent the rest of the night finishing up our laundry and getting ready to leave for Memphis in the morning.

Fact:

Anne should not become a cop because she’s the type that “shoots first and asks questions later”

Lesson:

If you want a good po boy, trust Guy Fieri 

Eat Well; Travel Often

Rico & Jillian