Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - New Orleans: A Local’s Guide to the Best Restaurants, Bars, & Quirky Fun

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

New Orleans celebrates its 300th anniversary this year, and since it’s almost Halloween, I thought this was the perfect time to talk about one of America’s most haunted Southern cities. I’m joined by Hope Kodman, a tour guide with French Quarter Phantoms, which offers tours such as Saints & Sinners, True Crime, Cemetery, Ghost and Vampire, among others.   Hope and I talk about the history of the Big Easy; the origins of Mardi Gras; the difference between cajon and creole; what voodoo is really all about and other fun stories. Of course, we’ll tell you where to find the best: food and drinks, quirky shops and museums, burlesque,  jazz, ‘female-owned romantic boutique,’ and more (visit postcardacademy.co for links and photos).     I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insuranceDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Mikital, and if you are the type of traveler who loves insider advice on where the locals are hanging out, then you are in the right place. Since it's almost Halloween, I thought it would be fun to talk about one of America's most haunted places, a southern city filled with vampires and ghosts, at least in books and in films and on TV. Today we are going to New Orleans, which is celebrating its 300th anniversary. I'm speaking with Hope Cotton. a guide for French Quarter Phantoms, which takes people on tours such as Saints and Sinners, true crime, a cemetery, and of course the Ghost and Vampire Tour, among others. Hope and I talk about the history of this laid-back city, including Mardi Gras, the biggest party of the year. You'll also learn the difference between Cajun and Creole, where to find the best drinks, the best burlesque show, the best jazz, the best female-owned

romantic boutique, which is Hopes, by the way. We discuss the French Quarter and the Other neighborhoods you need to check out, quirky museums, what voodoo is really all about. We'll tell some ghost stories. You are in for a treat. I accidentally say New Orleans a few times instead of New Orleans, so hopefully that is not too traumatic for the people who live there. I do apologize. You can find photos and links to everything we discuss on postcardacademy.com.

And if you like this episode, I would love it if you subscribe to this show so I can continue sharing great stories and travel recommendations with you. And speaking of great stories, this episode is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet. As a Postcard Academy listener, you can get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up using the link, audibletrial.com slash postcard. And if you decide to join Audible, members now get two free Audible originals every month. And so these are stories covering theater and literature and journalism.

I just downloaded one on Aretha Franklin, so I'm really looking forward to checking that out. Again, you can sign up for the free trial at audibletrial.com slash postcard. Now into my conversation with Hope. Welcome, Hope. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So I am dying to go to Romania, and I saw that you went to Transylvania University, but that's actually not in the Transylvania. Can you tell us where that is? So Transylvania University is in Lexington, Kentucky, and it's called Transylvania because that's Latin for through the woods or through the forest. So it was not named for any Dracula-related reason. The school is actually from the 1700s before Dracula was even written. But it's really fun to say that I went to Transylvania University now and being a little bit of a creep at heart, maybe a lot of a creep at heart. It makes me really happy. And it was a great school. It's a great school. It's a great.

Great experience. What did you study there? I did a double major in anthropology and drama. So I'm a tour guide now. That is a great way to put those skills to you. So did you grow up in Kentucky? I did for the most part. I was born in Tennessee, grew up in Kentucky. And then after college, moved to New Orleans. Why did you move there? What about New Orleans attracted you? I had always been really interested in New Orleans. I have cousins in sort of that the towns outside of New Orleans. And then one of my aunts lived in New Orleans through most of the 90s. So I traveled there before. I'd always heard stories about it. And I love the history. I love the culture. I love costumes a lot. I love the idea of dressing up and being a character.

So it was just a really good fit. I graduated from Transylvania pretty much right into the recession. And there were not a lot of jobs in Kentucky. So I figured I would move somewhere that seemed interesting that I'd always wanted to be and see how it worked out and now I've been here for nine years. Very cool. I can't wait to dive into the history. I've been to New Orleans. I guess I say New Orleans sometimes, but I've been to New Orleans a few times, but it's been so long. So, oh, I'm so excited. You should come back. Yes. Okay. For people who don't know about New Orleans, could you give us sort of like a visual snapshot? Where is it geographically? And what would the postcard look like? Sure. So New Orleans is in southeast Louisiana. It was originally,

essentially a portage between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain. So it is down at the bottom. And it's nicknamed the Crescent City because the Mississippi River curves into this cool crescent shape right where New Orleans is located. If you were to go to New Orleans, I have no sense of direction, but driving is really easy for me there because it's more, or less laid out on a grid, especially the French quarter. I find very easy to navigate. And we don't use north, south, east, and west. We use uptown, downtown, or upriver, down river, and then lake and riverside. So north, southeast, and west mean nothing. When you come to visit us, they will give you directions by the location of the river, essentially, or the lake.

Visually, when people think of New Orleans, what are the images that pop into people's minds? Oh, my goodness. I mean, a lot of it does come from movies and TV shows, but, oh, goodness. I think people think of drippy swamps and they think of rot iron and they think of voodoo, certainly. They think of brass bands. They think of Mardi Gras and Mardi Gras Beads and Mardi Gras costumes. I think they think of us, and this is true, is a really vibrant and diverse and exciting city. New Orleans is probably most famous for Mardi Gras. Can you explain what this is exactly? I think, you know, we know of like this drunk parade where people throw beads at each other. But there's so much more to that. So can you talk a little bit more about maybe some of the traditions that are part of it? Sure. Martigra is technically part of the Catholic calendar, although celebrations during that time of year and in sort of the style of what we think of Mardi Gras now would go back even farther to Pagan Europe. So much like other pagan European traditions, it essentially gets a Christian or Catholic veneer. But if you were to think of the Catholic calendar and New Orleans is still a majority Catholic city because of French and our Spanish background, Mardi Gras is essentially the last day to revel, to party, to get all your weirdness out before you must be spiritually right with God for 40 days. So it's the last day before Lent.

If you've heard of Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, Mardi Gras is Fat Tuesday. So it's the day right before. It's the day to eat and drink and be merry. And then according to the Catholic calendar, we must be very serious until Easter. And so it would have been celebrated throughout the Middle Ages, into the 1700s. They had a Mardi Gras sort of small mass and feast, actually, some of the very first colonists when they arrived in Louisiana. There's a location called Mardi Gras Point, where they would have. landed on Mardi Gras. It really becomes a massive sort of citywide celebration starting to be in the

way that we think about it now. In the mid-1800s, you would have groups of people form what they call crews, K-R-E-W-E. And a crew is essentially like a club. In some ways you could liken them to social aid clubs. You could even kind of liken them to secret societies like the Shriners or thawfellows, but more with a focus on revelry, with partying, with throwing parades. So starting in the 1800s, these crews would hold parades, hold balls, they would costume, they would mask, and they would throw trinkets and beads and money off of the floats. And those are essentially the precursors to the plastic beads, the plastic money, the stuffed animals, the light-up blinky toys that are thrown from the floats today.

So we start to see a more modern Marty Grommerge, like I said, in the 1800s, and it really develops from there. So if we are a tourist or a visitor, do we have any chance of participating in one of these crews, or is this very much a local thing? It's pretty local. Now, it depends on what crew you want to join, what they call the super crews, you know, the big massive crews like, oh gosh, Rex or Bacchus. or Zulu or Muses, you'd probably need to have been in town for a while to join one of those crews. Certainly, it's unlikely that if you're just visiting for a weekend that you would get to ride in that parade, pretty much impossible. If you're new to town, but you live here, I actually, one of the ways that I met so many of my friends, man, he's not my husband, was through joining

a Mardi Gras crew, but ours was a smaller walking crew. So we're a crew that gets hired to march in other people's parades. essentially. And so that's a lot of fun. It's a great way to meet people to make friends and to really get involved in the city. That's so cool. That's such a great idea for a newcomer because I talk a lot with people on this podcast who have moved to different countries or different cities and how do they meet people. So that's a great idea. So for Mardi Gras, it's the parade and then the crews have their own private balls. And then are there other things going on? Absolutely. There's a lot. So I think people when they come to Mardi Gras, they associate it really just with either going to parades or like being drunk on Bourbon Street.

Both of these are valid things to do. They're not the only things to do. Mardi Gras is a citywide holiday. So a lot of people get off from work for Mardi Gras. Kids are not in school during that time. So unless you're like service industry or, you know, work in the ER or something, you're probably going to be off on Mardi Gras day. And so people will really celebrate throughout the city, whether it's having parties in their home, whether it's going out to the parade route with their kids. A lot of Mardi Gras is really family friendly, or at least family friendly by New Orleans standards. A big part of it for me is just making a new costume every single year and going out and kind of being a character for the day. But different neighborhoods have different ways of celebrating. And a lot of the historically black neighborhoods in New Orleans, they have the Mardi Gras Indian tribes, which are. groups that make new costumes, new suits every single year. And they're very intricate, feathers, its beads. And they'll go very early in the morning throughout their neighborhoods, interacting with other groups or other tribes. If anybody watched the show Tramay on HBO, they really show this, and it's really amazing tradition. And then Kijing Mardi Gras is completely

different. It's a whole other thing that I actually have not experienced yet. But they also have their own traditions in the Cajun areas as well. So so much work goes into all of this. Is there a museum in the city that is hanging on to any of these costumes? Yeah, absolutely. So there's a few different places you could go. So in Jackson Square, the first sort of easiest place to go at the Presbyterre Museum next to St. Louis Cathedral. The first floor is a Hurricane Katrina sort of retrospective that's actually really solid. The second floor is a Mardi Gras Museum. So you can see. a lot of the costumes, again, from different parts of the city, different groups, you learn a lot

of the history that way. There are two places off the top of my head I can think of to learn more about the Martigra Indians. So there's the Backstreet Cultural Museum and the House of Dance and Feathers. And then if you want to see the floats where the floats are created, Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, which is just past the Central Business District, is a massive warehouse where they build sort of the most iconic floats of Mardi Gras. And they do tours, I think, every day. So even if it's not Mardi Gras, you can go and see how those floats are built and all the work that goes into them. Very cool.

Yeah. So New Orleans is celebrating its 300th anniversary. Yeah. Lots of history. So when you begin your tours, how do you ground your visitors in the history of the city? I'll mention that we were founded in 1718 by a fellow with a very long, very long, very French name, Jean-Baptiste Lemois, Tert Bienville.

And he would come in to this, again, portage between the Mississippi and the like Pontchartrain. This would have been land occupied by the Chittimacha, the Chautau, the Chickasaw. So Native American treads? Yes, yes. From my research, they didn't necessarily live directly, like build homes on this area,

because they knew better. This is a very, you know, flood-prone area. But it would have been the portage, again, if you're taking a boat from the Mississippi to like Pontch a train. And it was like hunting and fishing ground. And he will attempt to build a city. It does not go well. Our water table is about four and a half feet down. Bedrock is 70 feet down.

So they're on some shaky ground. They're constantly assaulted by mosquitoes. They are coming down with swamp fevers, like yellow fever. it's terrible. France desperately wants to have a colony right here because this is going to be strategic for them. They think that if they can get a city to stick near the mouth of the Mississippi, they'll control river trade for the entire continent. They'll also be able to have a good control in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. They attempt to essentially trick Europeans to come here. France will hire a person I consider to be a giant conman, a Scottish businessman called John Law, as a high. hype man for New Orleans. And he tells people, oh, yes, Louisiana is the Garden of Eden. It's heaven on earth. The temperature is cool and temporary year-round. I'm sure anyone who's visited New Orleans has enjoyed that cool, temporary year-round climate. You know, it says it's easy to farm and you'll never go hungry. People come here and realize none of this is true. And any of them with cash left over will

again go back to Europe. And eventually France does kind of the same thing that Britain did with Australia, they'll empty the prisons of Paris in order to populate the city. So they will send over their thieves, their debtors, they'll send over sex workers. They will send over anyone who's a soldier who'd been thrown into the brig. And I joke, these are the founding fathers and mothers of New Orleans. And do you feel like it's retained, it's sort of feeling of Wild Wests, or a little bit lawless? So New Orleans, coming from a history of being a major port city, a place where a good bit of the income was generated by sailors coming back to port, who would want to eat and drink and be merry, that was good business for them. And some of that feeling

has continued ever since. I like to say that New Orleans are just very, very good at partying. We know how to do it. Something that I tend to warn people when they first move here is no one's going to stop you from partying. Nobody knows your life. Nobody. People will care about you, also are not going to presume like, oh, you need to calm down because they don't know if you just got off work or what your situation is. And bars do not close or whether some bars close, but there's no last call in New Orleans. And so it's easy to really get wild if you don't have a handle on what you want that to look like. So you really do have to have a good bit of self-discipline in New Orleans because the city is not going to do that for you. Yeah, one of, as I was doing research for this episode, one of the top questions related to New Orleans was, is New Orleans a dangerous city or is it a safe city? How would you answer that?

I mean, it has its problems. You know, there are robberies, there are murders. I think the way that you would conduct yourself in any city applies here and that, you know, you want to look at your surroundings. You want to make sure that if you're walking down the street, that you're not isolated, that it's well lit. You don't want to get really drunk and wander around by yourself. Crime is a challenge that we face, but I think it's also something that we can decrease just by making people's lives better generally. And that's certainly my hope with the city. Let's say I've never been to New Orleans and I'm coming to visit you for a long weekend.

What are our must-sees? Goodness. Okay, so the thing I always say first, especially for New Orleans, and again, because this is exactly the kind of thing I like, you should go see the cemeteries. New Orleans is famous for our above-ground tombs. And the cemeteries are one of the things that people will often visit, and they really are beautiful. I think it's fascinating. We do a couple of cemetery tours at the company I work for. I work for a tour company called French Quarter Phantoms, and we do a cemetery tour twice a day every day in the mornings.

And then the cemeteries are also, or one cemetery is also featured on our garden district tour. but I really love them. I think they're beautiful. I think the history is amazing. And I love that this part of our history is being preserved for people to see as well. What's the scene like? What does it look like? And can you talk about some of the traditions, the burial traditions? Sure. So if you go to St. Louis number one, and it is our oldest active cemetery. So it's the oldest cemetery in town that we still use today. Not that often, maybe five or six burials a year, but it's active. It's about a block by a block in size. Really not that. big. It's just outside the French quarter. It's surrounded by thick walls that actually have vaults in them for burial. And then inside the cemetery, you're going to see tombs. If you can think of a tomb or a crypt, it's usually going to have two or three vaults, one right on top of the other. There's some really massive tombs in the center that have statues and other decorations on them,

called those society tombs. And one of the first things you'll notice, again, about the cemetery, it's not that big. You'd imagine a cemetery that dates back to 1789 to be massive. That's not the case. The fact is, you know, before we had a modern pump and drain system, we were trying to take the city from the swamp manually. So dry land was at a premium and we wanted to use that for the living. So you wouldn't see big sprawling cemeteries until after about 1900, once we got a modern pump and drain system. So if you fly into New Orleans, you'll see massive cemeteries on either side of the highway. But St. Louis number one is tiny. but it's very full. We estimate there's about 700 tombs and 100,000 people buried in that cemetery. So are they just buried on top of each other? There's a very rapid process of decomposition that happens in the tombs. So historically, the bodies would not have been embalmed. As far as human history goes, embalming in America is kind of a new thing.

So the bodies would have gone into the tombs for a year and a day, and the heat and pressure, mainly the heat. If a body is in that tomb, it's almost like it's in a slow cooker. They can get up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit on the inside in the heat of summer. And if you visit us in the summer and go in the cemetery, you will feel like you also are 300 degrees Fahrenheit. But the bodies are essentially reduced to dust and ash very quickly, and that makes them reusable. So they turn to ash and then they just put somebody else in the tomb? A family member, I assume. Yes, yes.

Family members, close friends, family members by marriage. And there's what's called a cavo or a little cave beneath the tomb itself. And that's where the dust is placed when the next person is going in. Interesting. So can you tell us a scary story or a story that you tell your visitors? Let me think. Let me think of which one I want to do. tell because I have some long woods and I have some short ones. Let's talk about, let's talk about

murials. So I'll give you sort of the basics of this particular story. So there's a, there's a restaurant on Jackson Square called Muriel's. Actually a great place to eat. I like it a lot. They're good New Orleans food. I love their turtle soup. And it was not always Murials. It was at one point a home by a fellow name Pierre Antoine Jordan. He would build this house. And according to all the stories, he loves to throw parties. He loves to entertain. He also has advice. He loves to gamble. And New Orleans is a very easy place to find a gambling game. And he starts to lose all of his money. Between the partying, between the gambling, he's just running out. And one night in the game of his life, pretty much all he has left is his house, maybe a few scant possessions. He's going to

throw caution to the winds. He thinks he has a good hand. He is going to bet his house. This is a ghost story. This does not have a happy ending. Of course, he loses. He's going to lose the house. And so he goes up to the second floor in the house that he built. He will drink a glass of red wine, as he always did in the evenings, and he will hang himself on the property. And it is said that the ghost of Monsieur Jourdan still haunts that location. If you go to Murials, they will talk to you about it. And for a good chunk of history, he was a pretty pleasant ghost, seemed to be friendly, kind of look out for you. When the building became a restaurant, he actually got angry. He seemed agitated and aggravated, and he would actually begin to mess with the restaurant,

whether it was throwing freshly clean silverware on the floor, whether it's rearranging the bottles behind the bar. And then finally, I had heard that he actually made them lose all of their credit card receipts or just something to do with their computer system where it was like enough is enough. Something is going on. There's some kind of literal ghost in this machine. And so they do what any rational, logical business owner would do. They hold a seance. And they hold a seance to contact George. And what they found surprises them.

They find that Jordan did not have this, you know, unsolvable issue with them. He was confused about what the building was being used for. He didn't perceive it as a restaurant. He thinks people are throwing parties just like he did, that they're having a great time. They're laughing. They're eating. They're drinking. And no one is acknowledging him as the owner of the house.

And so they think, well, that's an easy fix. So every single day, and you'll see this if you go, they sat at a table that is just for the ghost. And they pour him a glass of wine. They usually have their like good herbed bread on a plate. They do this every day. They take it away at night. And they will sometimes leave extra chairs in case the ghost wants to bring a buddy.

And so far they say it's worked. They say Jordan has ceased his mischief and he's a happy ghost again. They made peace with him. They made peace with a happy story. But they got to still, you know, they got to still keep feeding him wine because, you know. Actually, they have a, the second floor is the seance room that's actually really, really lovely as well. It looks like a seance from 100 years ago. It's really neat.

What is voodoo exactly? Sure. Voodoo is a religion like any other. It's gotten a bad rap from movies, from comic books, from TV shows, whether it's, you know, the skeleton key or the princess and the frog or, you know, James Bond. But voodoo is a syncretic religion. You could compare it to Sontoria or Condomble. It is, starts to really develop.

in New Orleans, again, starting with the 1700s and then even more so in the 1800s after the Haitian Revolution. When the enslaved people were brought over from the west coast of Africa, they're going to bring their culture and their religion and their language with them. And they want to continue to practice their beliefs. But by law, everyone in New Orleans, enslaved or free was supposed to be Catholic. And so Vodun or Vaudao, it's a syncretic religion. And so syncretic religions do not go out and convert others, and they don't want. get converted. Instead, they are going to sink up. And so the practitioners of Baudao will find commonalities and also ways to essentially hide their beliefs under Catholicism. And eventually

they'll start to merge. So we talk about someone like Marie Lufo, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. She was a free woman of color. She was born in the late 1700s, dies in the late 1800s. She would have gone to Mass on Sunday. She would have been a practicing Catholic. She would was also a voodoo priestess. So she would have recognized God, Jesus, the Catholic saints, and the Loa, L-O-A, or the voodoo spirits. And in Louisiana voodoo, you can often correlate specific African spirits with specific saints. For example, in voodoo, one of the most important spirits is Papa Legba, or Papalaba, and he is essentially the guardian of the gates between the realm of humanity and the spirit world. And if you want to interact with any of the other spirits,

you must call on Papa Legba to open that gate. His Catholic corollary would be St. Peter, because St. Peter guards and opens the gates into paradise. So it's not evil. It's not this inherently negative thing, even though that sells books and movies and TV shows. Voodoo, like any religion, you could use for good or for harm. And I think because some of the images in Voodoo

look scary to the sort of American or European perspective. And because of comic books, Voodoo is, I guess, fun. to think about it makes this sort of exoticized villain if you don't think too hard about it. But it's a real religion that people practice. I have heard that about 1% of New Orleans practice voodoo as their main solid religion. That's a good 4,000 people. So it is still alive in New Orleans and around the world too.

Yes. I think a lot of us are aware of voodoo dolls where we have a doll of our enemy and we stick a pin like the knee and then our enemy will have like knee pain. But when you say people practice voodoo, what do you mean by practice? What is like, I guess, what is something about voodoo that you wish other people would understand that it's not just voodoo dolls? So vood dolls, again, are, there I think that gets used not, again, necessarily for harm. And I think most people who seriously practice voodoo are not using them for harm.

It can also be used to heal. We think historically voodoo dolls were used as a medicinal tool. If herbal remedies and medicines didn't work that the voodoo doctor, the voodoo practitioner could make a doll of the person with the ailment, pin the area where they were sick, pray to the spirits, offer to the spirits, and that person would get better. As we think, a lot of those early voodoo dolls were actually healing tools. But again, that doesn't sell as well as torture devices, I suppose. And like I said, I think people just need to realize it's a religion like any other, and it's not inherently evil or bad or scary. Very nice.

Thank you. What are some other mustsies? Let's see. So one of my favorite museums in New Orleans is the Pharmacy Museum on Charter Street. Again, we'll keep in the slightly creepy tone. The Pharmacy Museum is the site of the first licensed pharmacy in Louisiana. And it is lovely and fascinating. They do tours. You can also just go in on your own and, you know, examine all the different cases, see the medical devices, medicines, weird pills. and syringes from, you know, the 1800s on up. It's really fascinating, but it's also really lovely. It's got that apothecary aesthetic that everyone loves, but comes by it honestly because it's a literal pharmacy. So it's really lovely. People get married in there, but it's also a really sort of terrifying look at what medicine used to be that makes you grateful for what we have now.

I think New Orleans had the first apartment building in the U.S. as well. So an early luxury apartment building, or set of apartment buildings would have been the Pontalba buildings on either side of Jackson Square. And they were conceived of, planned and created by a woman, the Baroness Michaela Pontalba, who was a, she was an heiress from New Orleans, married into nobility in France. her story is amazing. She essentially was married to her cousin, Celestine de Pontalba, the Baronet de Pontalba, in order to bring a title into her family and to bring money into his family because they were

sort of the classic broke nobles in France. But it was not a good situation. It was not a good marriage. Her husband, people go back and forth. I guess he was okay. bit of a wet blanket. Her father-in-law was straight up evil and abusive and would essentially do everything he could to get the rest of her fortune, including keeping her from seeing her family members, isolating her in the home, not letting her go anywhere. He eventually attempted to shoot her

point-blank with dueling pistols. He did shoot her, point-blank. She lost two of her fingers and had bullets lodged in her torso, but she lived. She actually would rehabilitate for a few months the father-in-law kills himself after he thinks he's killed her, and she's finally able to get a divorce. And she will live till her 80s. I believe she lived until she was in her 80s. Finally gets that divorce, comes back to New Orleans. She's the talk of the town, not because she survived a near-death experience, but because she got divorced. That was a huge deal back then.

But she becomes a city developer and really is going to be a stylemaker and a tastemaker for the rest of the French quarter. She's going to be one of the influences that popularizes the wrought iron and the cast iron that we associate with the French quarter. She really makes that the style. And she's going to build these giant brick apartment buildings on either side of what's now Jackson Square, which we can still see today. There's a museum called the 1850s house that you can go in and see how those apartments would have been laid out. So yeah, really fascinating. Yeah, the architecture in New Orleans itself is, I think it has landmark status, right? So you can't really. change the outside. And it's quite colorful. Could you describe a little bit what the French Quarter looks like? Sure. So it is, it's a neighborhood that is almost like a national park. It's under ordinances from the Vucre Commission, the French Quarter Commission, that you cannot change the exteriors of the buildings. You can maintain them. You can, you know, keep them in good shape. But even that is going to take months of bureaucracy because they really do want to preserve the historic nature of the French Quarter as much as possible. You're going to see a lot of

brick buildings, a lot of stucco buildings. You'll see lots of wrought iron and cast iron. Nothing too tall. There's some tall hotels on the far end of the French Quarter close to Canal Street, but they're really not allowed after the first few blocks. You'll see a lot of local businesses. There's a handful of chains, but really not many. And most of the chains are going to be on the outskirts of the quarter. So it really is a true neighborhood. And it's very easy to feel like you are back in the 17 or 1800s. In fact, when they shoot movies in New Orleans, like interview with a vampire or was the one they did when I was here. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. Really, all they have to do is move the cars, move the street signs, you know, take away any signs of modernity and lay down

some dirt. And it's immediately a completely accurate historic set. which is really amazing to run up on when you're not expecting it, because they do film, not as much as they used to, but with a fair frequency in the quarter, movies and TV shows. And if you run into, oh, now I'm in the past, it's wonderful. What are some hidden gems that you would take me to? I have a lot of friends that are bartenders. So there's several different bars and restaurants that I really enjoy. There's one called Canaan Table.

I really like on Decatur Street. Really delicious cocktails. It's sort of got a colonial Caribbean vibe in terms of the menu. The food is also really solid and it's just lovely. They just opened another bar called Manilito, which is very rum-focused. It's at the foot of Dumain. And so that's definitely a nice one to check out. Domain Street in general, I really enjoy.

I do a lot of tour stops there because there's also some great resources for voodoo. If you are interested, you want to talk to folks who actually practice voodoo. There's a few different shops that have opened up that. are less touristy than some of the, you know, mass-produced, you know, sort of tourist shops. So there's a shop slash cultural center called Voodoo Authentica right there. There's the historic Voodoo Museum, a block from that. And then actually close to Manilito, a new voodoo shop is opened up called Conjure. And then I have always seen it as more of a European witchcraft and sort of general pagan shop, but there's another shop called esoterica in that area too. So people, I've heard it called it

a cult alley. But that's a lot of fun and really interesting to see. How do you spend a leisurely afternoon if you've got the day off? Ooh, I love all of New Orleans neighborhoods. I love to explore and see parts of the city that I don't normally go to. I live downtown and I work primarily in the French Quarter as a tour guide. That's where most of my tours happen in the French quarter in the cemetery. And so I like to visit other neighborhoods. I like to go to the park. City Park is beautiful. Audubon Park is beautiful. The streetcar is an awful lot of fun to ride. And even going to, so the west bank of New Orleans and the spot that most tourists would go to is Algear's Point on the other side of the river is really fun to just go to. And it's still New Orleans.

It feels like New Orleans, but it's away from a lot of that hustle and bustle. It's just sweet, beautiful neighborhood that has some really nice little pubs in it. You can take it. You can take a ferry from the East Bank, which is the side that the French Quarter's on, over to the West Bank. And that in and of itself is like a cool way to spend a couple hours. The ferry ride is cheap. It's like a dollar or two. And it gives you a really good view of the city. If you want to see New Orleans sort of laid out before you, you'll be able to see the curb or that wherever.

You'll be able to see the whole city. You'll be able to see what we're up against in terms of nature because the current there is strong. If you see a boat try to make that turn, it's like they're doing the drift, right, trying to get around it. And then you go to the West Bank and it's just this lovely neighborhood that you can stroll around in as well. So what is in the West Bank that we should check out? I really enjoy. There's a pub that's very nerdy. I'm a big nerd called The Crown and Anchor.

And then otherwise, you know, there's been a couple of new shops and restaurants that have opened up over there. But it's just a lovely little neighborhood to check out, see a little bit more of that. that calmer side of New Orleans. I really like uptown in the garden district too. It is not the neighborhood I live in, but it's lovely. It's where you're going to see the drippy oak trees. You're going to see beads hanging from the trees that have been caught there from the Mardi Gras parades the year before. It's funny. You don't see as much Spanish moss within the city. You see it in the parks, but that lovely moss that hangs from the trees. So it's been replaced sort of just by chance, but now it's part of the look of the city is the beads hanging from the trees that have just naturally been

caught there from last year's parade. So it's like a more glittery version of Spanish moss, I guess. Very glam. Very glam. Where do you go when you're in the mood for some culture? Gosh, there's a lot of options. Like I said, I enjoy the museums. I like taking other people's tours to whether there are other people from my company or just other tours that we don't do anything like, you know, tours that go to neighborhoods we don't go to or tours on bikes. The New Orleans Art Museum is great at City Park. They have updated exhibits pretty much constantly, and that's a really lovely resource. The World War II Museum is world class. It's stellar. And then just in terms of going out and about,

you can throw a rock, though you shouldn't, and, you know, find a music club or someone doing stand-up comedy or someone doing some kind of performance. And I think that's really special as well. You don't have to go too far. And it sometimes will give you the paralysis of there's too many options. Like I don't know what to do because there's something happening almost every single night. Burlesque is big down here. There's a lot of solid burlesque shows pretty much every week you can find burlesque. Where should we go specifically for that? Gosh, I love, there's a few different performers that I'm friends with and I've worked with. So Bella Blue produces a few different shows around town.

If you just check out her website, I think it's the Bella Lounge. You can find out where she's performing. And then Trixie Minks, I love. She's a hoot. She's really funny as well. And she produces a show called The Flirt a Tees at One Eye Jax, which I love is a venue. It's a venue in the French Quarter. She does a big burles show there once a month.

So you can definitely check out the flirtaties as well. How do you spell that? F-L-E-U-R. D-E-T-E-A-S-E. Okay. Where can we look online to see what's going on in town? There's a few sort of consolidated tourism websites. I think Visit New Orleans is one of them.

The Gambit Online has a pretty good events list that you could check out. If you listen to our live local music station, WWO-Z, they have what's called the Live Wire that they'll play. And you can listen to OZ just from your computer as well, but they'll tell you what bands are playing, what music is happening every night. So that's another good resource. If we want to listen to some jazz, could you tell us one or two places where we should definitely check out? Sure. I love Preservation Hall. If you want some real New Orleans jazz in a really amazing environment from a really cool historic context, preservation hall is hard to. to beat. It's not a bar. It's not a restaurant. You go in and you listen to these established, older, hardcore, awesome men playing jazz. They are incredibly talented. They've toured the world. And Preservation Hall, as the name implies, is dedicated to the preservation of jazz music.

Part of the experience is waiting in the line, right, seeing everybody going by because it's pretty close to Bourbon Street. But you go in and it's this just gorgeous historic interior. And you listen to these people who are so talented play. And it's amazing. Should you buy tickets in advance? You can. You absolutely can. Yeah, it's up to you. You may want to if it's a really busy weekend or a busy night. But like I said, the line's also kind of part of it. Okay. Otherwise, a lot of people know this. Frenchman Street, which is just outside the French Quarter, has a lot of live music. There'll be some jazz. There'll be some brass bands. Usually one or night, it's usually at least one on the corner on the weekends of folks that are literally playing that street corner to the crowd that

comes by playing for tips. And then you'll have bands playing inside a lot of the bars and the restaurants. And there's usually no cover. You just have to, you know, buy a drink or buy some food per set from the restaurant. But it's always good courtesy to tip the band. And it's not just jazz. There's, you know, there's funk. There's blues. There's all kinds of music. But Frenchman Street, a lot of people enjoy as well. Okay. Great. Let's talk about food. So what cultures have influenced food in New Orleans? Sure. African, French, and Spanish are the first three that I would think of. Those are the big historic cultural influences. And you see that with Creole food in New Orleans. When I say Creole from the 17 and 1800s, Creole meant of the colonies. So a colonist

or the descendant of a colonist. And Creole people, again, oftentimes had, French, Spanish, or African ancestry, or two of the three, or all three. And so that food culture is where you're going to see a lot of that classic New Orleans cuisine. Later on, you're going to see other influence as well. One of the more modern influences that I can name is Vietnamese food. So we have a really large population of Vietnamese folks in the city, and so our Vietnamese food is stellar.

It's really good. So these influences are still coming in, but when you think of, you know, your jambalai and your gumbo, that's going to be primarily African-French Spanish. What is Cajun? Cajun is a – so Cajuns are a different population. Some people think that Cajuns and Creoles are interchangeable and they're not. The easiest way, just surface level to think about it, is that Creoles we associate with the city of New Orleans and Cajuns we associate with the more rural parts of southeast Louisiana, not in the city of New Orleans.

Obviously, they would talk, they would trade. they would know each other. They're not the same folks. Cajuns trace their ancestry back to French Canadians. So in the mid-1700s, when Canada goes from bringing a French holding to an English holding, these French Catholic loyalists are not so welcome. And so a lot of them will migrate down into southeast Louisiana, and they are the ancestors of the Cajuns. So there is some crossover with some of the cuisine. Both cuisines like spicy food. You know, both of them will use seafood and local ingredients, but they're not the same people. Great. So what are the foods in New Orleans that we should try? I love gumbo. You can get seafood

gumbo or you can get a chicken and sausage gumbo. They make vegetarian gumbo now as well. I'm a soup person and a stew person, so definitely have some gumbo. Jambalaya, that spicy rice dish, really excellent. If you just want an easy lunch, you can get a po-boy or a poor boy. That is a sandwich that is filled with one of many kinds of ingredients and usually dressed with lettuce and tomato uh tomato uh usually dressed with lettuce and tomato let's see barbecued shrimp if you like seafood is really good it's not barbecue flavor it's actually got this really delicious sort of buttery sauce with it are grits a thing um grits are a southern thing generally um you can definitely get good grits here but that's not just a new orleans dish that's not all over the south would you say norleans is a vegetarian friendly city

I've known vegetarians that live here. It's a challenge. I've definitely had Torgas come and ask me where they can find a vegetable to eat. Because we'll give you vegetables, but they might be fried or they might be in a stew or they might be covered in butter. You can be vegetarian here. Like I said, it is a bit more challenging, but it's certainly doable. And we do have vegetarians here for sure. But probably more challenging than, you know, maybe the West Coast or the East Coast.

Is there a restaurant you would recommend for classic New Orleans food? All over the French Quarter, there's a ton of really delicious options, whether you go with something that's more casual, whether you go with something that's nicer. I mentioned Muriel's earlier. I genuinely do like them for a slightly more high end, though not the most expensive New Orleans food. There's other dives you can go where you can have some delicious New Orleans Fair. Jack Dempsey's has good seafood. Coop's Place on Decatur is this great dive that just has all different kinds of New Orleans food. We don't allow too many bad New Orleans restaurants to stick around. Okay. It's hard to have a bad meal. Yeah. Are there any food markets we should check out?

So there's the French market just out, or it's in the French quarter. So just close to the riverfront is the French market. You can get some pretty decent New Orleans food there, although it's going to be more sort of stall-based. and then a lot of the French market is also souvenirs and the like. They have my favorite daquiries in the French market, which is the organic banana. And they use local New Orleans rum, fresh fruit, ice cream. I have no shame about the fact that I love frozen daqueries.

I just can't help that. And theirs are like solid gourmet. But they're not really any more expensive than the ones that you would get from the giant machines on Bourbon Street. And they taste so much better. There was a place that went up, in my neighborhood a few years ago called the St. Rock Market that's gotten a lot of press.

It's solid. They have local vendors that will come in and rent stalls from them. St. Rock Market historically was a fish market up until not too long ago, and then it was abandoned for a while and not used. So it was renovated a few years ago. And you'll find a lot of really good food in there as well. And there's other markets that are coming in throughout the city. Another market that's also opened up, it's called the Dryads Public Market, and it is on Aretha Castle Haley. That's going to have a lot of good food as well. And that's a good option to, again, kind of like the St. Rock Market, if you want to get out of the French Quarter and see some other neighborhoods, that's going to be a solid choice as well. And is this a place where maybe local designers or artists would be selling stuff as well? Not necessarily. These are more food markets. So there used to be a really cool art and craft market on Frenchman Street. It's no longer located there. It's now called the Art Garage, and it's in this giant garage warehouse space on St. Claude Avenue. That's another great one to check out if you want to see

some local artists. So what are some of your favorite chefs, and you can include yours if you want? Sure, I will include mine. So in addition to being a tour guide, I also co-own a boutique on St. Claude Avenue called Dynamo, which is a health and education focused adult store. So we're women owned. We do a lot of workshops and classes for the community, but we are essentially a romantic boutique with a really lovely, comfortable interior. It's a place for people to come in, ask questions about sex, and maybe take a few things home. What inspired you to open that shop? Being from Kentucky, I had very little in the way of sex ed or sexual health information. It wasn't a thing people talked about a lot.

And I really liked talking about it. I wanted to ask people questions. I wanted to know more about the health and cultural aspects around sex and relationships. And when I moved here, we didn't have a sex positive shop like that in New Orleans. Places like New York or San Francisco have babyland and good vibrations. We didn't have anything like that here. So I figured, I'll just open my own. And it's taken a long time for us to get a brick and mortar,

but we actually did just open this past November. Dynamo, come see us. If you're over 18. Awesome. What other shops do you like to go to if we want to support a local business? Sure. Well, I guess you said they're all local business, but I guess I mean more. There's a lot of local businesses.

I'll tell you one of my favorites in the French quarter, and it's also where I get my hair done. Classic New Orleans fun, Fifi Mahoney's on Royal Street. is a wig makeup and costume accessory shop with a salon in the back. And they're a ton of fun. The wigs are fabulous. They're actually really affordable if you want, especially if you hear around Halloween or Mardi Gras, like at least wear a wig. Please participate. Fethis is fantastic. And again, they have, you know, the wildest makeup, the most fun looks. And it's a salon as well. It's where I get my hair cut. I just want to talk about drinking culture really quick. Just because of it.

it's so unique compared to the rest of the states, I think. So in New Orleans, can you drink wherever you want? You can take drinks in the street, yes. So it's not just the French quarter. It's the whole city. You can walk around with a drink. It just cannot be in a glass container. And I'm not a lawyer. I have heard tell that it's also not supposed to be in a metal container, but I have seen people with cans. So I am not a lawyer. Do not come at me if you get, you messed with for a can. You definitely can't drink in a glass. So we have what's called GoCups. And you can get them at the end of any bar in the city, plastic cup. When you want to move on with your drink, pour it in the cup, and you can go wherever you like. And what are some local drinks that we should try? There's a lot of really fabulous cocktails from New Orleans. If you want to go with something that's going to be a little less sugary sweet, the Sazirac, it contains rye whiskey. If you're a fan of rye, definitely a good drink for you. And then it's also going to have Absinth in it, or back when Absinth was prohibited, it would have Herb Saint. in it. So it's going to have that

rye flavor as well as the sort of licorice flavor of absinth and a few other ingredients as well. I have hazy memories of grenades. Oh, hand grenades. Yeah, that recipe is actually under lock and key. Tropical Isle will not divulge

the recipe there. But the hand grenade is, I think, the classic bourbon street drink that people like to make fun of because it comes in the big hand grenade cup. But, you know, Tropical Isle, they know their business. They do a great job. They their business is selling people drinks and getting them wild on Bourbon Street, and they are successful. So the hand-graynudes, I think, are the classic drink that people associate with Bourbon Street debauchery

and kind of all that entails. The other Bourbon Street drink that I would think of off the top of my head is Pat O'Brien's, which does have a face out toward Bourbon Street and then one on St. Peter as well. And the hurricane is the one that you see in that big hurricane glass. It's red. It contains, I believe, four shots of rum, passion fruit syrup, fruit juice, lots of sugar. I live here. I can only drink one hurricane from Pat O'Brien's and then I have to take a nap.

I do not have the strongest tolerance, but people love those as well. And again, those are very sugary, sweet bourbon street drinks. But if that's your jam, like, go for it. Have fun. I appreciate your time so much. Before I let you go, I would love to do a lightning round of your New Orleans favorites. Is that cool? Yeah.

Before I get to the lightning round of Hope's favorite places in New Orleans, this episode is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Want to figure out how much it's going to cost with no commitment and without having to talk to anyone? Go to postcardacademy.co slash insurance and use the handy calculator. This will help you get a cost estimate from World Nomads and you can do it all online, no pressure. Okay. What's your favorite brunch set? I love, there's a spot in the Marini called the Cake Cafe. That's probably my favorite bakery, cafe and brunch spot. Really solid, really lovely, nice people. What do you like to order there? When it's not carnival season, I really enjoy their bagel and locks. But they also have really delicious kingcakes during carnival season. They make this, well, they make a few different really good

kingcakes, but I believe there's one that's brie and apples and it's just delicious. What's a king cake? So king cake is the traditional dessert of Mardi Gras, and they've kind of gone all different directions. Now you'll see kingcakes with, you know, wild toppings. But traditionally it was just sort of simple bread roll cake with maybe sprinkle, not sprinkles, but sugar on top. You'll see some with icing now. You'll see some that are filled with things like cream cheese or blueberries. You'll see savory kingcakes. but it's that round pastry cake that people eat during carnival season.

It contains a baby, a little plastic baby that represents baby Jesus. And if you receive the slice that has the baby in it, you win, but you lose because you have to buy the next king cake. Oh, that's a fun tradition. Yeah. What's your favorite coffee shop? There was a spot right next to where I used to live called the Houdat Cafe. Again, lovely little locals coffee shop, really sweet people running it. I always would get ice coffee there.

Ice coffee's big in New Orleans because it's hot so much of the time. So, yeah, the Hudat Cafe, name for the chant that we associate with the New Orleans Saints. What's your favorite place to get a drink? So I talked about Canaan Table and Manilito earlier. But the place that I drank the most out of any of them is the voodoo lounge on Rampart Street. That's where the tours start from. That's where French Quarter Phantoms is located. But it's just, to me, the happiest, you know, weirdest, silliest bar.

Very local. It's right on the new streetcar line on Rampart. A bunch of nerds, bunch of weirdos. And I love them. The drinks are a good price. The bartenders are, you know, kind and funny and entertaining. And you can catch a really good tour while you're there as well. How about museum?

The pharmacy museum, for sure. That one is my favorite. I go there at least once a year. Do you have a favorite market, whether that's, um, designer or food? Probably the art market. Like I said, the art garage on St. Claude Avenue. It's really solid. Okay. Jazz Club? Preservation Hall. Are there any apps or anything that are focused on New Orleans? Actually, I'll tell you what, if you're here during Mardi Gras, there are a couple of parade tracker apps that are really useful. Whether you're trying to go to a parade or trying to avoid the parade so you can drive around it,

I think all of the major news stations put out a Mardi Gras parade tracker app during that time. And you should download that. If you're here for carnival season, you want to know where those parades are going to be. So again, you can either attend them or avoid them. Are there any culture tips we should know before going to New Orleans? There's a few. So I thought about this a little bit. One of them is New Orleans are friendly and talkative. Strangers will talk to you. They will say hi to you. And it is polite to stay high and talk to them back. It's not a city where you just put your head down and you don't look at anybody and don't talk to anybody, even if it's just like passing by and saying like, how's it going? People will not necessarily launch into a long conversation with you,

but we're a southern city, we're a friendly city, and we like to talk. We like to talk to you. So just understand that people are just being polite and friendly, and that's part of the deal. A tip if you don't want to stand out too much as a tourist is that you should not wear beads unless it's during Mardi Gras season or carnival season, because otherwise you're immediately going to be pegged for a tourist. Nobody wears beads unless they caught them from a float, if they're a local in New Orleans, keep that in mind. If you want to just have fun wear beads,

I personally will not judge you, but if you don't want to look like you're from out of town, don't wear them. And the other thing I would say is if you see someone who has a corsage made of dollar bills pin to their shirt, you should wish them happy birthday. Because that's the birthday tradition in New Orleans is on your birthday, you pin a dollar to your shirt,

and people will give you more money. throughout the day and treat you right. You really want to make their day. You can give them a dollar to put on their pen. That's a fun way to participate in other people's celebration. And I see somebody who is their birthday pretty much every day in the French quarter. So that's a nice tradition as well. That's a lovely tradition. And again, a nice way to meet people as you're new to New Orleans. How much should we tip at a restaurant bar or taxi? This is more for international listeners. Sure. I mean, solid 20% for sure. That's just polite.

If you want to tip even over that for good service, that's always appreciated. A lot of folks in New Orleans that you'll interact with, if you're coming here to visit our service industry and a good chunk of their pay is going to depend on tips. So you really want to do, as I said, at least 20%. And we do have Lyft and Uber. I use Lyft for the most part. And then we still have the regular cabs as well. Is New Orleans a walkable city? Could we walk everywhere or would we need to get?

Is there public transport? There's some. You can walk a lot of places. New Orleans is flat as a pancake. So you're not going to be walking up any hills or anything like that. It is warm. So keep that in mind. Drink water, hydrate if you're here during any of the warmer months, because you'll feel it.

You can definitely, if you don't want to walk miles and miles, you can get, again, cabs and lifts. The streetcars are a lot of fun, but you may wait a while for one to show up. you know, they're not quite so regular as, say, you know, a subway system or something like that. Is there a particular neighborhood you would recommend we stay in when we're there? If you can stay in the French Quarter, it's honestly the easiest because you're going to be going to the French Quarter so much, especially if it's your first time. That's where a lot of folks come to see those historic buildings coming to see all that culture and that history. There's a ton of hotels within the quarter and around the quarter. So that would be my first choice.

if you're just coming to New Orleans for the first time, I'd stay in the quarter. Is there any place outside of the French Quarter that you would recommend as a must see? Oh, goodness. I mean, all the neighborhoods surrounding the French Quarter are lovely. They are historic. Whether it's going to the Backstreet Cultural Museum or St. Augustine Church in the Tramay neighborhood, whether it's strolling around the Frenchman Street area in the Marini.

And even, again, if you go to the Garden District area, uptown New Orleans, that's going to look like that picture postcard of the big oak trees and the grand southern mansions and the Spanish moss that is now made of beads. Even just taking the St. Charles Streetcar up and down and seeing all of the garden district in uptown is really special and really beautiful. And finally, I saw this on your page on LinkedIn and I just thought it was so lovely. You had written, I believe in the power of laughter to brighten a day, move a mountain, depose a tyrant, and change the world. I just think that's such a lovely sentiment. Oh, thank you. What were you thinking when you put that down?

I think that using humor and using joy are ways to connect with others in a world that is often unfair and hard. When we talk about the history of New Orleans, there's a lot of rough times and there still are, you know, whether it's fires in the 1700s, whether it's floods and hurricanes, whether it's epidemic disease. for a lot of these situations, you either laugh or you scream, and if you scream, you might never stop screaming. And so I think the ability to connect with others, to find joy where we can, and to use that to fight the powers it be is really important. And I think that's how a lot of New Orleans live. We've lived on the edge of disaster for most of our time. And I think that that really has impacted the way that we live. You know, tomorrow is never necessarily assured. So we've got to love and live and enjoy life as much as we can while we have it.

And I think that's where a lot of the culture is informed. That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for talking to me today. Hope, where can people find out more about you? So if you want to take a tour with me, I work for French Quarter Phantoms. You can just go to French Quarter Phantoms.com. That's the company. I'm actually, my image is on that website in a lot of places.

I am the woman in the short curly black wig screaming, looking sort of like a vintage pin up on a horror pulp novel. That's me. I'm also in a couple of the videos. So you'll see me. I look a little bit like Mary Poppin. She is my style icon. So if you want to take a tour with me, definitely go to French Quarter Phantoms. If you want to see my shop, you can go to dynamo toys.com or just visit us on St. Claude Avenue. And then my Instagram is at Dynamo Hope. Thank you so much Hope. I really enjoy talking to you. And thank you. I enjoy talking to you. me really want to go back to New Orleans sometimes soon? Please do. Come back and see us and look me up. We'll take a tour. Okay. Thanks, so. Bye. Thank you for having me. This is great. Bye.

I mentioned my fond, hazy memories of drinking grenades in the French Quarter. This was right after college, and a friend of mine and I were road tripping before we got roped in by our professional careers. And so we land in New Orleans, where I'd actually been before on another road trip, but I was really happy to be back.

And so I remember my friend and I listening to live music and dancing and just having the best time. And then we drink one grenade, and the next thing I know, we are swimming in our underwear and our hotel's courtyard pool, and every single room had a view down onto us. The next day, I went to reception to say I could not find my clothes, but they had not seen them. And it turns out that I had carefully hung them up for the first time in my life. That is the power of the drinks in the big easy, so be careful. Oh, and if memory serves, and it probably does not, we stayed at the holiday in in the French corner and the breakfast was amazing.

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