NEW ORLEANS, CONT’D

In some ways I understand the term “Big Easy” for New Orleans, but at times things seem kind of frantic to me. The noise of people yelling, car horns and loud radios blaring, and heavy trucks rumbling continues throughout the night. Thank heavens for my sleep machine to drown most of it out.

Last night we started out for Galatoire’s Restaurant 2½ short blocks from our hotel. It was sprinkling a little, but we decided we could make it by walking close to the buildings and keeping under the balconies. Well, you can guess what happened: the bottom fell out in typical New Orleans fashion and only one of us had an umbrella. So we took refuge under a balcony close to Arnoud’s, a famous and very old eating place.

In fact, BJ and I had been there fifty-three years ago. Our father had brought us with him on a business trip to New Orleans when I was sixteen and she was nineteen, and we had eaten a memorably delicious meal at Arnoud’s. Daddy used to talk about it for years. So when the rain didn’t let up, we made our way into the restaurant and eventually were seated and had a very fine meal. Galatoire’s could not have been any better.

NEXT MORNING

We had another wonderful meal at Brennan’s on Monday morning. Just before we left to come down here I discovered online that the famous breakfast restaurant had reopened on June 2, so of course, we made reservations for a brunch. It was just as good as I remembered. Then the genius and I left to do some math exploring.

We rode out to Chalmette, which is only six miles from our hotel, but in another parish (county). We had lived here in the spring of ’61 when he was an engineer overseeing the building of a reservoir. He wanted to photograph it and report on the math aspects of the construction. But alas, that was not to be; the parish had decided after Katrina hit to use the opportunity to build one twice as large. The old one was torn down in 2004 and the new one replaced it. A trailer park housing employees who work for the parish was established over the foundation of the old tank, so as the genius said, there is certainly no danger of their sinking because they are held up by 1365 piles with reinforced concrete.

We were disappointed, of course, but we also got to see some of the devastation of Katrina since Chalmette was hit hard by the storm.

And today we had an even more in depth view of the damage as we took a guided tour to several other locations. We saw the levees that were breached and also the lower ninth ward that took the worst hit in the area. It was very sobering to learn and to see first hand what the hurricane did to New Orleans; I have a much better idea of what they went through here and also can marvel at all of the reconstruction efforts that have been made in a little over 2½ years.

Tonight the genius and I will eat our last delicious meal in the Crescent City and then we will be on our way home early tomorrow. We have certainly had a great time.

I can hardly wait to get back to writing about the genius and his idiosyncrasies; I’ve learned a few more down here!!