Just when I finally settled down into sleep, my alarm went off, telling me that it was 3 am and my vacation was finally starting.

We were on the road to the airport by 4:15, having forgotten nothing more serious (as we would discover later) than sunscreen and soap. The automated ticketing machine allowed us to check our bags and get our boarding passes without actually having to talk to another human being...but then, as we are finishing, our presence was requested at a security station where an unsmiling member of the airport's security personnel opened our luggage (in full view of the line of people still waiting to check in), took a perfunctory look through our underwear and toiletries, and sent us on our way-having determined that we were not dangerous (at least not to anyone else). During his examination, he poked a metal detector into Lori's umbrella, which happens to have a duck head on the handle. Giddy from lack of sleep, Lori exclaimed, "He violated my duck!" The security guard failed to laugh when she redirected this comment at him...but then, I guess the security staff probably aren't hired for their senses of humor. The remainder of the check in process went smoothly, and soon we were really on our way...

No vacation would be complete without at least one picture taken from the airplane...what better way to start the this travelogue than with a picture of the sunrise?

The two hour or so layover in Washington, D.C. provided us with an opportunity to stretch our legs, have some breakfast, and deface a postcard of the president. We also bought some postcards of the airport, and having addressed them to our friends back home, we headed out to the main terminal to find a mailbox. Coming back through the security checkpoint, we were asked to remove our boots. I complied, and placed my shoes on the conveyor belt with my other belongings. Lori, figuring that her boots hadn't set off the metal detector at Bradley, said she'd be okay.... When the metal detector went off, she had to take off the boots and send them through the x-ray machine, and she was also treated to a frisking with one of the metal detection wands. It's a pity that during this kodak moment, my camera was stored safely in my carry-on bag and by the time I got it out, Lori was already putting her boots back on.

I interrupt this travelogue already in progress to bring you this tidbit of conversation from the Reagan International Airport:
"This is the final boarding call for flight ----. If you have a confirmed seat, you MUST board." - PA annoucement
(sound of whip cracking)-Lori
"And like it."-random person sitting near us.
I now return to my regularly scheduled programming, already in progress...

...flight to New Orleans was uneventful, just the way a flight should be. As we landed, flying low over Lake Pontchartrain, we got our first glimpse of the city in the distance-a few small skyscrapers, the superdome, the river (used to seeing the Connecticut and Ohio rivers from the air, the twisting of the Mississippi took me by surprise). We also had a nice view of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the almost 24 mile long bridge which crosses the lake. Is there any real reason to build a bridge almost 24 miles long, except to be able to say that you did it...and to be able to write "World's Longest Bridge" on the postcards?

On the ground, having collected our luggage from the bowels of the airport (and having purchased postcards featuring transvestites for some lucky co-workers), we secured a ride in a cab already going to the French Quarter with another passenger. The cab brought the businessman to his swank hotel on Bourbon Street. The doorman opened my door to assist me out of the SUV, but I informed him that we were not staying at that hotel. "You'll be sorry," he told us, closing the door again. We finished our cruise down Bourbon Street, past the beer trucks lining up to provide the fine establishments there with a night's worth of refreshments. And finally, we arrived, exhausted but exhilerated, at our hotel.

We checked in, unpacked, freshened up a little, and avoiding the temptation of the queen sized beds, headed out into the city. We reveled in the sun, and the warm breezes which were such a nice change from the snow and cold we had left behind. The buildings were all sort of romantically decayed (stucco peeling from brick, paint faded in the summer sun, galleries filled with hanging plants):

The streets were pretty quiet in the early afternoon, we passed a few other tourists with their cameras and grins, on our way to the Historic New Orleans Collection (a museum that features both a historically preserved house of the early 20th century, and the odds and ends gathered by the Williams family). The tour of the house was great, except that I wasn't allowed to take pictures anywhere except in the courtyard:

I have decided that when I have a house, I want a courtyard like this.

A very sweet scent filled the courtyard, which the tour guide told us is Sweet Olive (there are heavily scented flowers planted in many of the courtyards-I imagine they're there to help cover up the noxious odors that drift over from Bourbon Street). In any case, the courtyards, and the rest of the house, were beautifully, if somewhat eccentrically, decorated. The tour guide pointed out the maps which decorated the walls of the house-mostly maps of New Orleans and the surrounding area (the Williams family loved their maps), and some of the more eclectic furniture-including tables which used portions of grecian columns as their bases.

After our tour, we checked out the rest of the historic collection (more maps-and a scrapbook containing a lock of Napoleon's hair, weirdly enough, among other things). My favorite map depicted the Mississippi River; the towns along the river were labelled, but sections of the riverbanks were marked with descriptions such as "large swampy area" and "bog" which, for some reason, struck me as incredibly funny. It may have been the lack of sleep.

Next stop on our tour of the French Quarter was the New Orleans Historical Pharmacy Museum. This place was cool...they had all sorts of old-fashioned pharmaceutical and medicinal tools and herbs on display, including a trephination drill, a tonsil guillotine, gris gris, bloodletting devices, marijuana, laudanum and the gold plated pills favored by the rich (though they were completely ineffective due to the fact that the gold could not be digested by the body).

---The apothecary shop: their methods may have been primitive...but at least they had style. The courtyard of the Pharmacy Museum contained different herbs, with explanations of how they would have been used to treat various illnesses, and provided a good backdrop for a photo op.---

By this time, we needed a break, and some food. We found an inexpensive restaurant where we ordered jambalaya and ratatouille for dinner and bread pudding for dessert. From our table by the window, we watched the mule drawn carriages go by on St Louis Street. After dinner, we wandered towards Jackson Square, drawn by the sounds of music. A jazz band used the sidewalk in front of St. Louis Cathedral as a stage, and we stopped to watch for a little while, and then continued into the park to get some pictures of the cathedral, and the kids playing near the statue of Andrew Jackson:

"We're getting pictures here!"

St. Louis Cathedral, with Jackson Square in the foreground.

Then it was off to Bourbon Street for a little sightseeing, some souvenir shopping, a few drinks, a little nightlife (a very little nightlife).

At the Funky Pirate, we sat down at the bar to have a drink and listen to the live music. Lori asked the bartender if she could make a zombie. The bartender chastised her for requesting a drink she could get anywhere, when we could get one of their speciality drinks instead:

The Hand Grenade (The ingredients of the Hand Grenade are a secret, but it is a melon flavored drink of high alcoholic content available at only 3 locations in the world-it is illegal for any bar in America, other than the 3 in New Orleans, to sell a drink and call it a Hand Grenade. So there.)
The Tropical Itch ("made with 3 types of rum and served with a back scratcher" and having the something of the flavor of cherry cough syrup-but not in a bad way)
The Horny Gator (proclaimed in the pamphlets for the bar-yes this bar has its own brochures- that it is "guaranteed to make you a better lover")

After getting samples of the drinks, Lori ordered a Hand Grenade, and I got a Tropical Itch. The Hand Grenade came in a bright green fluted plastic cup with a hand grenade shaped water squirter. My Tropical Itch was served in a red tiki cup with (you guessed it) a back scratcher. You have to love a place that serves drinks that come with toys, and you have to love a town where the bartenders occasionally ask if you want your drink "for here" or "to go". We took our drinks out to the street, and feeling a little woozy from the combination of alcohol and the fact that we had been up for about 17 hours after only getting a half hour's worth of sleep, we decided to make it an early night, and wandered drunkenly back to our hotel. On a side note, I think if we were going to get mugged or murdered during this vacation, it would have been during this walk, as it seemed to me then that we looked like easy targets as we left the crowds on Bourbon Street and wandered through the darkening residential section of the French Quarter toward our hotel. Thankfully we made it back to our hotel without incident and stumbled up to our room to write out a few postcards (in the hope that if we mailed them the next day, they might arrive home before we did), before letting exhaustion take over.

Mardi Gras may be over, but the evidence is everywhere.

Bourbon Street at dusk.