Wednesday, April 21, 2021

The French Quarter

Good afternoon, campers! It’s Silver Cliche’ checking in with you from chilly, sunny New Orleans.

Some of you know that we designed this trip with two thoughts in mind. 1. To finish our long-standing objective to spend at least one night in each of the 48 contiguous states and 2. To be in Brimfield, Massachusetts for the summer antique/collectible spectacular. As of the start of this trip, we have camped in 32 states. I won’t name them. Just trust me. The ones we have missed fall into four groups. They are: the far west (NV, CA, OR, WA, ID and MT), New England (VT, NH, ME, MA, RI and CT), the Atlantic coast (NJ and DE), and the north central region (ND and MI). In fairness, we tried to visit Michigan in 2017 but the weather was forecast to be so poor for the days we were booked that we said “hell no!” and moved on east.


So, I think I’ll start posting a scorecard of our progress on the trip and our progress toward goal #1. It’ll look like this:


States visited this trip: 5. New states camped this trip: 0

States camped lifetime: 32. New states to go: 16


We won’t click a new state off the list until we reach Nevada on May 10.


Anyway... New Orleans... and specifically the French Quarter. What can I say? If American cities had a family reunion, the French Quarter would be like the character “drunk uncle” from Saturday Night Live. It is what it is. Brash, unfiltered, full of the unexpected, smelling slightly of urine, oddly charming and most of all unapologetic. It’s old and it shows every line and wrinkle it’s earned in 3 or 4 hundred years. Even it’s landmark — the St. Louis Cathedral — has the occasional birds nest in its stonework and missing slats in its louvers. Drunk uncle left his fly open. Here... take a look at a pic Mrs. Cliche’ snapped this morning.




Even under the peeling paint and broken sidewalks this city oozes a love for life itself and a sense that civility is hiding in the courtyards that are glimpsed through locked gates and down walkways between close-set brick buildings. I took a pic last night that was supposed to be titled “enticing garden through locked gate”. Unfortunately, my iPhone decided I wanted a close up pic of a gate. I was well past before I realized it’s error (it’s smarter than me... it clearly wasn’t my job to tell it what to do). I proudly present “rustic gate hiding an enticing garden — a photo by iPhone 12”.


The French Quarter is the girl who you know your mother doesn’t want you to date, but somehow you can’t take your eyes off her. The details in the architecture are the seductive sparkle in her eyes. Somehow, the smeared mascara just doesn’t matter all that much.




As seductive as the architecture is, the deal is sealed by the food. We decided that take-out was the way to go this trip. Last night I walked to Verti Marte which was mentioned in numerous take out reviews. It’s appearance would have scared me off if I passed it randomly. It’s a 100 year old deli/grocery stuffed into a space that a suburban family of four would call “cramped”. Half of the things I tried to order were met with “we don’t have that today”. However, they did have a muffuletta sandwich to remember, dirty rice and red beans with sausage. Today we left the dogs in the Airstream and walked to Cafe du Monde for coffee and beignets. If you haven’t had the pleasure, this is a venerable NOLA stop. The coffee is good but the beignets are the attraction. They are a fried dough delight. They are rustic in shape but roughly rectangular, about 3” long 2” wide and 1” thick, fried to a medium gold like polished brass and served hot immediately after an amount of powdered sugar equal to their weight is dumped over them. They come three to a bag for $4. I was dressed sloppy but still turned to take each bite so the excess sugar would fall to the flagstone floor of the outdoor patio where we sat. After eating four of them (Mrs. C’ quit after two while mumbling something that sounded like “doctor” and “A1C” while shaking her head in a rapid “no” motion) there was what could be called a “heavy dusting” of powdered sugar accumulation on the floor beside me.


Once the shopping was done I asked Mrs. C’ if she wanted to get lunch. We opted for takeout. Since one item that was unavailable last night was gumbo, I proposed “the Gumbo House”. $24 and a 15 minute walk later we were in the Airstream, greeted by dogs who evidently thought we had been gone for a week and enjoying a very fresh taste of New Orleans.



So... after a nap, I’m posting early thanks to no driving today. We might get two movies in this evening. Time to set up the big screen!


Later...

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