New Orleans Day 2

Woke up to the wind blowing hard. There's a flagpole outside our window and Dan was actually woken up by the sound of it shaking with the wind. It was an overcast morning and we saw rain off and on.

After our hotel breakfast (free with room, and a pretty good one) I tried to talk Dan into going out for another exploring walk through the city but the idea didn't thrill him. However, he needed to go to the convention center to check in for his conference, so we decided to walk down there.  The rain had stopped and it looked like the sun was coming out.

I'm all ready to go.  I bought some sunscreen yesterday so I won't burn my face any further.

Passed this sign on our way.  Dan pointed out how you can see on the building the vestiges of what was once a building next to it.

Something about this crumbling building fascinated me -- probably the tree and other foliage growing on it, and the pigeons who were roosting there.

It was about a 20 minute walk down to the Convention Center, which is situated right on the river.  Don't let this unassuming facade fool you -- this place is just enormous.  It took us like another 10 minutes just to get to the part of the building that Dan needed to register in.

On our way through the Convention Center we passed this little decorated streetcar.  This is the second one I have seen in the city.  I wondered if it was something like The Crabtown Project in Baltimore, where about 200 fiberglass crabs were decorated by local artists and displayed throughout the city, then auctioned off to benefit the public school system.  After Googling it, it sounds like the Streetcar Named Inspire project does have a similar idea, but may not have been received quite as well.

After Dan registered, and I made as many nerd jokes as I could at the expense of the Microsoft TechEd attendees (even though I am technically a nerd myself), we walked across the street from the Convention Center to a green space called Mississippi Heritage Park.

This sculpture commemorates the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

This was pretty much all there was to the park.  A big grassy area surrounded by a brick path with some benches.  I guess a grassy area might be difficult to come by in this city.

Dan and I ate at the very uninspired but also very affordable Subway for lunch, and then we hung around the hotel room for much of the afternoon.  Late in the day our friend Kevan flew in from Maryland to attend the conference so we met up to spend the evening together.

We decided to try and navigate the streetcar system.  For a while, I was able to get schedules and real-time ETAs on my phone.  But later the computer system appeared to have crashed and that no longer worked.

We waited probably 20 minutes for the streetcar.  We could have walked to where we were going in that time, but it turned out to be a lot of fun riding the streetcar.

We rode to Jackson Square in the French Quarter only to find that the diner we were planning to eat at had apparently moved, almost a mile away.  So we meandered around looking for an alternative.  We walked past cool antique shops, street artists, tarot card readers/voodoo priestesses, and many drunk people.

We finally settled on Stanley's, just at the corner of Jackson Square by the St Louis Cathedral.  I had a Thanksgiving Turkey Croissant sandwich which had the most strange and delicious combination of tastes in it.

I thought it was a good restaurant, moderately priced, decent service.  I kept grinning at the music playing because it was as if they had taken my favorite Pandora station and played it over the sound system.  We sat at Stanley's for a while catching up with Kevan.  I was reminded that it is rather lonely in Orlando without the close friends we had made over the years in Maryland.

Afterwards we went to the Cafe Du Monde for more beignets and frozen cafe au laits, then strolled along the river.  It was a lovely night, the humidity died down, but I soon noticed the dark side of the city:  Roaches and rats.  Both scurrying everywhere.  Florida has plenty of roaches too, and rats by the riverfront in a city are understandable, but still.  It gave me quite a sense of unease whenever I felt an unexplained tickle anywhere.

On Monday morning Dan will head to the conference and I will be on my own for the day!