This picture, which I captioned "Après le déluge," shows how I looked after walking in the rain. I'm not wearing my glasses, because I didn't want them to get wet. My hair is wet and disheveled, and I look rather bedraggled.
Terry and I started the day with breakfast at a restaurant with the appropriate name French Toast, after which we took a Lyft to a hair salon for Terry to get her hair done. While we were there, it started raining. Pouring. According to my weather app, it would be raining all day. And we had two walking tours scheduled for the day. We were going to get wet. Fortunately, we had brought rain slickers for each of us.
We Lyfted back to the French Quarter and met up with Esmond and Lucia, and went to meet up with the guide for our first tour. This was a food tour, in which we visited three restaurants. At each restaurant, we sampled local cuisine, while our guide talked to us about New Orleans and its history and culture, with an emphasis, of course, on food.
Here's another quote from the 2001 trip log:
A few words about Cajun and Creole: Cajun (w) is a corruption of Acadian; the Cajuns are descendants of French Canadians who drifted south when they were thrown out of Acadia, in the Maritime provinces of Canada. Creole (w) comes from the Spanish word criolla; the Creoles were people of mixed French and Spanish ancestry who settled in the New Orleans area beginning in the 1700's.
However, although I did learn the difference between Cajun and Creole in terms of ethnic origins, I never did figure out the difference in terms of cuisine. Restaurants were all "Cajun/Creole," and I don't know who we have to thank for what. It's all good, whatever it is.
(end of quote)
Well, on this trip, I learned a little more about the difference. The Creoles were more upper class city dwellers, while the Cajuns were more backwoods types who mostly lived in the swamps. Creole cuisine is generally more flavorful, and uses what they call the "holy trinity," a mixture of onions, celery and green peppers. Cajun cuisine is spicier, and makes heavy use of cayenne pepper. That's a gross oversimplification, of course, and the Wikipedia articles have more in depth information. Also, adding to the confusion is the fact that the two cuisines have blended a lot over time. As I said before - it's all good.
In addition to the restaurants, we also visited a candy store, where we sampled pralines, a Louisiana specialty made with brown sugar, butter, cream and pecans. Deadly. Actually, they can be made with other nuts, but pecans are the most common.
And then we also visited Pepper Palace, a store dedicated to all things hot and spicy - seasonings, salsa, barbecue sauces, etc. Everything in the store is available for tasting; the trouble is, by the time you've tasted two or three items, your taste buds are overloaded. We bought a bottle of Bloody Mary mix as a present for a friend. Actually, including Pepper Palace on the tour is cheating just a little, because it's not a Lousiana company, it's a national chain with locations all over the country, and it's headquartered in Tennessee.
Later that day, we went for another tour. This one was a cocktail tour, in which we visited four bars, and sampled five cocktails. I don't drink, so when I booked the tour, I asked if I could get a discount, and they were very nice about it - I got a little over 50% off.
I didn't take any pictures on either of that day's tours, except for this one - at one of the stops on the food tour, I took this selfie:
This picture, which I captioned "Après le déluge," shows how I looked after walking in the rain. I'm not wearing my glasses, because I didn't want them to get wet. My hair is wet and disheveled, and I look rather bedraggled.
Afterwards, we went for dinner at Nola Po'Boys, a small sandwich shop specializing in - you guessed it - po'boy sandwiches. These are sort of the New Orleans version of the hero, or sub sandwich. Basically, it's meat on a roll, with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayonnaise; hot sauce and/or Creole mustard are optional. The meat can be any kind of meat; according to Wikipedia, "roast beef, baked ham, fried shrimp, fried crawfish, fried catfish, Louisiana hot sausage, fried chicken, alligator, duck, boudin sausage, and rabbit" are all possibilities.
The restaurant also served another traditional New Orleans sandwich, the muffaletta. This is like an Italian sub, but on a round roll, with a dressing made of chopped olives. Terry ordered a half muffaletta, and Lucia ordered a whole one. When we got our order, we were surprised to discover that the "whole" muffaletta was roughly the size of a vinyl LP! Lucia managed to eat about 3/4 of hers, and took the rest back to the hotel.
The walls of the room we were sitting in were covered with Mardi Gras souvenirs:
This picture shows two of the walls, and part of the ceiling. The items displayed include parasols, parts of costumes, posters, and a wide variety of items thrown to the crowds by paraders.
After dinner, we went in search of some good music. As we were walking from the restaurant, Terry tripped and fell on the sidewalk - right in front of a drag bar! And one of the drag queens, who had been standing around outside, came rushing over to help her up. Fortunately, she wasn't hurt, just shaken up.
Anyway, we found a jazz club, where the music sounded good, but it was so crowded that we couldn't find any place to sit, and it was so loud that Terry and I couldn't take it, so we went back to the hotel. Lucia and Esmond stayed, and told us later that they did find a place to sit, so maybe we should have stayed. Another of life's missed opportunities.