The Big Easy (New Orleans Part 2)

I can't remember exactly what we had for breakfast the next day but we certainly had a number of beignets while we were there. Beignets are a popular New Orleans snack food that are basically just fried dough with a bunch of powdered sugar on top. The only thing that makes them a little different from normal fried dough is that they are sort of puffed up with air in the middle giving them a vaguely round shape. They seemed to sell them pretty much everywhere in the French Quarter and at all the coffee shops in the city. There was a big placed just called Cafe Beignet down near the river which seemed to really only sell beignets. I think the place was pretty famous as it was always pretty full even with a large number of outdoor tables under a big awning. All the food we had in New Orleans was really good. We ate one night at the nice restaurant in a different Hilton in the city, there were about four within walking distance. Mike was even able to get us a discount in the restaurant since he worked at a Hilton. The food there was really good including a soft shelled crab that was so big I almost made myself sick trying to finish it. That was actually one of the few meals where we didn't just order a few things and share everything. Harry and Mike loved doing that but it's just never been what I'm used to so I wasn't quite so gung ho about it.

We had gotten a flier the previous day for a brewery tour of a local Rum company. It seemed as good a thing as any to do so we got a taxi out to where the warehouse/brewery was. The thing was that we didn't exactly read the brochure very carefully since what we thought it said was that there were tours from 11am - 3pm what it actually said was that there were tours at 11am 1pm and 3pm. So we ended up arriving about 30 minutes too late for one tour and 2 hours too early for another. The place wasn't close to anything either it was basically in an industrial area of the town with nothing much around but warehouses and construction yards. The people at the rum place though were really nice to us once we all realized our mistake. We didn't have much to do so we basically just say down and waited for whenever the next tour would be. They had some rum cake out from the last tour also which was really good, and seemed to include more rum than cake. They also had a big dispenser full of one of there rums and iced tea which went really well together in the heat. I'm not usually much of a fan of iced tea but with rum it was really good. We talked some with the people there and read through some of their literature. The rum company seemed to be pretty recent but they already had a number of different types of rum.

After not too long the guy who does the tours came by and just figured since we were there he might as well do a tour then. The tour was pretty short, the whole brewery basically fit into one small warehouse and you could see the whole thing practically from the door. He showed us a little about how rum is made, which since it involves brewing is pretty much the same as how any alcohol is made. What was interesting is that when the brewing process is over the rum it makes is like 80-90% pure alcohol so they have to delude it with water to get it down to a drinkable level. The other really interesting thing is the guy showed us the water line from where the water got to during the hurricane Katrina flood. The mark was really high up but the guy said that the water was actually higher than that and the stain on the wood was from the level it settee at for a while. They said that they actually hadn't lost that much in the flood because of where a lot of the barrels were placed but had lost some stuff. After that we got to do a rum tasting which was a lot fun. They had about five different types of rum including some that were made to be especially good with tea. Harry and Mike bought more than I did but I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to get it back to China.

Later that evening we went out to dinner in the city again and this time I was sure to get some gumbo and some jambalaya since they are such famous local foods. Gumbo is good it's basically a thick seafood stew but I really liked jambalaya since it's basically just paella with slightly different spices. After dinner me and Harry got in line for a famous Preservation Hall jazz club. I think you can tell a lot by a place by what sort of atmosphere it has. Some places charge a big cover and have fancy tables and food and what not. Preservation Hall has no food, no drinks, about enough benches for 1/5th the number of people packed into the little room, no air conditioning, and a line out the door that stretches down the block. Preservation Hall actually became famous partially because of all this. At a time when other jazz clubs were adding lots of dancing room and what not Preservation Hall just focused on jazz and little else. The place was packed way before the musicians showed up. The set up was simple with a trumpet and trombone a bass and a piano. They played a few songs then then brought in an older guy who did some singing. He was good but being what looked like 90 he didn't exactly have a loud voice and simply the whirred of the fans almost drowned him out.

They divided the time up with several sets and the low admission price allowed you to stay for as long as you wanted. The last set was the most fun as the final song they did involved the trombone played marching around the room and doing what must be the longest trombone solo on record. At one point he was even able to get down on the floor while playing it and get back up. After the music was done we went out to the bars for a while. Harry and Mike were still really excited about the lack of open container laws but coming from China where the laws about alcohol are simply nonexistent it wasn't as much fun for me. There is a certain fun in breaking the rules and carrying beer outside sort of has that feeling but it's a lot less when you get used to it. The most interesting thing about the bars was that they would often have two bars in them, a nicer one upfront and a cheaper one in the back for people like us. This almost made the bars into two places at once a dive bar and a more respectable place. The bar tender at one of the back bars we visited had just been in a car accident of some kind and seemed so spacey we wondered if he had a concussion, I think he eventually went to the hospital to check it out. As we were leaving one place we noticed a University of Wisconsin flag. We asked around and found out that it was simply that one of the residence had been a badger. You never know where you're going to find people.