THE FRENCH QUARTER AT LAST

We had a rather interesting experience trying to reach our hotel in New Orleans last night. We rolled into the city a little before 7:00 and just before we reached our exit, we made a wrong turn. That’s when the pandemonium began.

The genius was driving and the other five people all had maps trying to direct him how to get to where we were going. Finally, we reached Lee Circle which was familiar to us, but because of the one way streets, the genius and Paul, MA’s husband, decided to stop in at a little convenience store to get directions. Meanwhile, I was frantically searching on the map to see if I could figure it out.

At about the time I saw the light, the genius and Paul came slowly out the door and were standing there talking in a worried way. MA said they were looking up as if seeking divine help, or maybe hoping to see an angel drop out of the sky. Right away I knew that they didn’t get any satisfactory directions.

And sure enough, they didn’t. Paul had approached a man who had a coke and packages of crackers in his hand. It soon became obvious that the man was very inebriated because he kept dropping the crackers and he had difficulty talking. But it was too late; Paul had already asked him for directions. The man was so smashed that all he could tell them was “Oh, yes, there’s the hotel right over there” while pointing to Robert E. Lee’s statue. All this while he was trying to hold onto the crackers.

The genius and Paul began to feel uneasy and decided to exit the place even though there were others there who might have been able to help.

I could see they were distressed and yelled to tell them I had worked out the directions, one way streets and all. We reached the hotel a few minutes later.

We had a good laugh about it afterwards, but for a while there, things were tense.

Today we rode the street car out to the Garden District for breakfast then returned to the fairly new WWII museum. Going through all the exhibits was a remarkable experience and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The genius has been reading a book about D-Day that he had gotten from his school library, so he was particularly interested. We ended up staying for over two hours.

So far, no math experiences, but the day is yet young!!! I’ll report more tomorrow.