Sunday, April 6, 2008

Food-filled French Quarter

We flew to New Orleans this weekend for what was originally supposed to be a friend's wedding. The bride-to-be called it off about eight weeks ago, so it ended up just being a party with his family and a few friends. R booked our flight and our hotel rooms the weekend before the wedding was called off.

Our flight was late getting in, so instead of having a few hours to take a nap and get ready, we pretty much had to jump in the shower as soon as we got there so we could be ready for 8:15 when my parents picked us up. We went to Upperline for dinner, which is one of R's favorites. It was a first visit for the rest of us. Their fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade really were worthy of the dreams R had been having since he made the reservations. Mmmmm. I had a huge half roasted duck but sent much of it home with my parents, who planned to use it to make ravioli.

Saturday morning my parents came back to get us and take us to visit my Granna. I saw a real decline (even mom noticed it since her last visit), so it was a hard visit, and made even worse by finding out today that she is back in the hospital. They thought it was pneumonia, but it is apparently just a respiratory infection from the cold she had earlier and is being treated with antibiotics. She got a wheelchair on Friday and is having a hard time adjusting to it. We could tell she was depressed, and she would zone out for bits here and there. The nurses say she is sleeping more and more now. I know what that means.


We had reservations for 15 at Antoine's on Saturday night. We were in a back room and that may have affected my experience a bit. I know that getting food out for 15 can be tough, and then everyone waits for all plates to be served, but this resulted in my fish being just barely warm and I ate less than half of it. I did fill up on appetizers though, and I at least enjoyed most of them. I say most because I have discovered that I do not like Antoine's original Oysters Rockefeller. I think I prefer another restaurant's attempt at recreating it. I don't know if it was the (too much?) Pernod, but I know that I did get several grains of rock salt in my mouth (the oysters are baked in the shell on a bed of rock salt), and the salt completely overpowered it.

The rest of the evening was spent on one of the Balconies at The Royal Sonesta overlooking Bourbon Street. We had beads to throw to the drunk tourists, and I was happy to find many Auburn people to scream "WAR EAGLE" to and throw beads to. Oh, and if you're wondering, yes I did see several sets of breasts. The guys in our group were down a few feet from me and were attracting the ladies with long strands of large gold beads.




(yes, I eat. I'm just slouchy in this picture making my shoulder blade stick out in such a lovely manner. Sorry mom!)

I got a lot of knitting done with our flight delay. I'm a few inches past the waste yarn for the afterthought heel on my socks, and I have now have yarn for another pair because I found The Quarter Stitch on Chartres while we were walking around this morning and bought some green Koigu

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