Our second and final day in N’awlins was divine. Breakfast at the Camellia Grill in South Carrollton with far too much butter in the omelette (I could feel the weight piling on) followed by a driving tour of the Garden District, a trolley ride into the French Quarter and a meander around Jackson Square and Decatur Street. We had café au lait and juice at the Café du Monde, jambalaya and red beans and rice for lunch, walked more around the Quarter looking at the old lacework, stumbled upon an absinthe bar down Pirate’s Alley, talked to old men painting walls, and then as the sun set, headed to Frenchmen Street to find Snug Harbor, where we knew the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra Jam was playing.
I ordered Chartreuse while Doug tried out a new rum and we enjoyed blackened catfish for dinner and then one of the best, sharpest, wildest live jazz performances I’ve seen, all of us calling out, “oh yeah!” during solos and the clarinet sang sweet, deep sugar while the cornet wailed and the saxophone laughed at them both. The big guy playing the double bass burbled to himself as he plucked those strings, bee doop and bing, baby. And we clapped along, joy in our hearts and all the troubles in the world forgotten. When they played slow, it was a swelling wave of love.
We went down the road to DBA to see blues legend Walter “Wolfman” Washington after that, but it was too loud and not right, so we poured ourselves into a cab and home to our couchsurfing couch near Napoleon and St Charles, slept like babies and woke up early-ish to drive to Austin for Thanksgiving.