On to the next chapter. Read on…
Friday morning we awoke bright and early and met up with the P’s at Petunia’s, one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans. We discovered them last time we visited and I was blown away by their french toast, which is made with Costa Rican vanilla. The place is small, so sometimes there is a line, but this time around, since there was no special event taking place in the Quarter, there was no wait and we got a nice corner table. The P’s arrived and we quickly ordered our food. I had the French Toast (of course) while the others had omelettes of various kinds. True to Petunia’s form, the portions were large and delicious. Everyone sampled my French Toast and agreed it was the best they ever had. Sure the place had flies (what place in NOLA in summer doesn’t?), but the waiter was great, the food was fabulous, and the prices dirt cheap. So I can handle a few flies buzzing around JHP’s baseball hat.
We then went in search of the perfect piece of art. Here’s where I mention that some of the paintings were NOT worth the price listed. I mean, a two-tone oil painting of a stickman is worth $1300? I don’t think so. JHP and LP are searching for a painter to paint a copy of their wedding photo, so they periodically asked the galleries if they knew of artists that did that kind of work. They all said no. We stopped into Rinard Guthrie several times – Denis and I love that gallery. One of their artists has done two paintings of two of our cats, and we want their new artist, Chris Menconi, to do a sculpture of Cooper.
There was a rainstorm at one point so we ducked into some dive bar on Bourbon and waited it out. We had a couple drinks in the meantime, and captured LP on a funny bit of film. As soon as we have it converted to the proper format it will be posted here for your enjoyment. We watched it over a dozen or so times during the weekend and it never failed to make us laugh. In fact, LP made us laugh the whole weekend. She’s so much fun to travel with.
We took the St. Charles streetcar out to the Garden District to look at the lovely houses (we passed the Real World New Orleans house). We hopped off as the car turned toward a dicey section of town and found ourselves in front of Cooter Brown’s, a beer bar that a friend of mine had recommended. We headed in and stayed for quite a while. The Malibu & pineapple drinks were well made and CHEAP, and Denis and JHP enjoyed several beers as well. LP played it safe and had soda.
We finally decided to head back to the Quarter for our dinner reservations and got onto the next streetcar heading in that direction. We went about a mile and the car stopped to pick up more passengers, including a blind kid. Denis offered him his seat, and for the remainder of the trip the blind kid proceeded to talk my ear off. We talked about movies (he likes horror, action and scifi), chess (he loves it and says it’s easier than checkers), and alcohol (he is only 15-going-on-16 but recommended the Hand Granade at Tropical Isle, which was made with 20 different liquors). The streetcar finally made it back to the Quarter, and we all got off. I said goodbye to the blind kid and LP commenting on the conversation I had with him. I said, “Oh, you heard our conversation?” She laughed and said, “Who couldn’t? He wasn’t very quiet.” So apparently everyone on board heard the minor telling me about the liquor. Nice.
Next up: Our dinner at Emeril’s.