in your mom's pants!

i am glad to be out of texas, although in some ways this is out of the frying pan and into the fire.

we drove for most of today, stopping only a few times. one particular stop was in houston, which was awful, although i don't want to say it's always awful, just when you are trying to get to a mcdonald's for lunch and for a bathroom break, and you get off the freeway and take what looks like a left turn but what is actually a "turnaround." in texas they have the weirdest on and off ramps ever, including these turnaround things - one-way streets paralelling freeways that offer no way out of you get stuck on them in the wrong direction. i had to make a long, long loop around, and then in the mcdonald's, where i bought a gross salad, i got stared at by a bunch of kind of creepy older men.

another minor event that i believe you will probably be amused by is my grip problem. since the disaster that some people call water skiing, i've been really sore and it hurts me to grip things. meaning, it hurts to tear apart sugar packets, open soda cans, and hold the steering wheel. i am pathetic.

gripping problems aside, we made it to new orleans without a hitch. it's really weird because all of a sudden you are not in texas anymore, but quite definitively in louisiana, on swampy ground. louisiana is strange. it feels very backwards, very poor, very antiquated. another thing about today was that we definitely entered the south. sadly, you can tell by some of the racial differences here - the further east we got, the more there was a dividing line. (on an actual funny note, in a gas station somewhere in louisiana these guys talked to dan about the antlers on the car. afterwards dan said, "i think they were gay. or maybe just southern," which i thought was an interesting twist on the "or maybe they're just british/european" confusion.)

we got here around dinnertime and checked into our hotel, the lamothe house. it's apparently a historic building of some kind, founded in 1830 and in another sobering moment, we realized that our room is definitely converted from servant's quarters, which kind of gave me pause for a second. the house is located on the very northeastern edge of the french quarter, which puts it about a block away from really poor neighborhoods and the freeway, with lots of people sleeping and begging underneath the overhangs. the city is very weird that way - old sleepy historical neighborhoods bordering newer but totally run-down areas. and even the historical areas are kind of run down, the paint peeling off and rotting plants and things. the street where our hotel is, for example, has no functioning street lights at the moment. they're all dark.

as soon as we got here, something very strange and new orleans-ish happened to us - as we were checking in, a man in all white and a bow tie came into the office. he introduced himself as a reverend and said he was supposed to be performing a marriage ceremony. the receptionist looked at him and said he'd had no idea, but asked for the last name of the couple. "i can't remember," the minister said. "it's in my diary..... valerie? [pause] valerie and nathaniel?"

the receptionist apparently had all the info he needed because he sent the reverend downstairs to find the couple. when dan and i walked through the area again, we saw the minister talking to a woman with big hair and a bright magenta ballground somehow hiked up so it was kneelength, with awful white platform sandals. another woman was with her, who had a long ponytail hairpiece that didn't match her hair and a forest green dress on. they were discussing the set up with the minister and apparently one of them married nathaniel later on, because even later that night we saw a card table set up in the courtyard by the pool, with a white tablecloth on it, two candlesticks, a huge bible, and a boombox next to it on a stool. i told dan that i expected the minister dude to start selling snake oil while he was in town.

after getting settled and watching a little mtv, we took off for dinner. we wandered around the french quarter looking for a place that was recommended to us by orges (turns out that it isn't in the french quarter). we also wandered down bourbon street. so weird. it's like the las vegas strip, new orleans style. there are lots of blended-drink machines that you can buy with souvenir cups and carry down the street, lots of people soliciting you to go to strip clubs, lots of strange characters, lots of cigarettes and cigar smoke, and so on. we couldn't really take it, and gave up on orges' restaurant, eventually making our way back to a place we'd seen earlier in the evening, the cafe amelie. it was pretty and quiet and there was no one there. the bartender owned the place, saying that after 8 years in new york and a year of "traveling around" he decided that he should "share the garden" with people and he opened a restaurant. i sure hope that more people start going there because it was REALLY good. we splurged, with wine, coffee, and dessert in addition to the entrees. rachel, my chicken salad reminded me of meltz and i really missed it. (also for those who remember the joke about andres' "restaurant in his pants" - this place was a definite pants restaurant. it was really secluded and pretty and candlelit and dan couldn't get enough of the date-ishness of it.)