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Yesterday was filled with travel, waiting and walking. Our plane left early in the morning from Grand Rapids, and my very kind wife drove Nick (a fellow grad student) and I out to the airport at 5:15 in the morning. Our plane got to Memphis a few minutes early and I got myself settled in for a five hour layover there. Then, Nick noticed that his ticket showed him having only a 1.5 hour layover before continuing to New Orleans. I had booked the wrong flight by accident. Luckily, his flight was still open, so I switched up to his flight, only to find that when we reached New Orleans, my bags had not. So, it was a nice long wait in New Orleans before my bags arrived. It was nice though, I read the entirety of a book and had a nice conversation with Nick and Tom Adams via cell-phone.
Once we got to our hotel, Le Cirque (it's located at Lee's Circle--in honor of General Lee; you know you're south of the Mason Dixon when...), unpacked and decided where we would head for dinner. We would go east, to the French Quarter to a cool Italian/Mediterranean restaurant there. Nick and I decided not to duplicate any nationality of food while we're down here, we've got Vietnamese, Cuban, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, French, Mediterranean, American, Creole and Cajun planned. I love cities! Well, we set out and walked down a beautiful street, admiring the gorgeous trees and the houses. About 30 minutes in, we though we should be seeing more people and more french quartery things, so we check the map. It took us a few minutes to find our location because we weren't close to the FQ at all, we'd walked 30 minutes in the wrong direction! Well, no matter, I had a Barq's Red Cream Soda (think Rock 'n Rye) for the walk back, and we went to an awesome Mexican restaurant for dinner.
One interesting thing to note about New Orleans; it's 11 feet below mean sea level. How did it get that way you ask? Well, New Orleans is built on the Mississippi delta, a fundamentally unstable structure that is only maintained above the sea because of constant inputs from the river. The river here is confined to its channel through the city, so no more sedimentation; the city is sinking! To maintain that situation, it has massive levees and a network of I think about 30 pumphouses to pump the groundwater out. Even with that, it has a water table only a few feet below the ground. Because of that, it's trees (and there are millions of them) all have roots very near the surface, which makes for some amazing root masses at the base of the trees. Without all of these trees, the pumphouses would have to work a whole lot harder, so I'd wager New Orleanseans don't just cut down a tree any ole' time they want. So, the streets are shaded by massive branches that you could use to get into the second story window of houses across the street!
Once we got to our hotel, Le Cirque (it's located at Lee's Circle--in honor of General Lee; you know you're south of the Mason Dixon when...), unpacked and decided where we would head for dinner. We would go east, to the French Quarter to a cool Italian/Mediterranean restaurant there. Nick and I decided not to duplicate any nationality of food while we're down here, we've got Vietnamese, Cuban, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, French, Mediterranean, American, Creole and Cajun planned. I love cities! Well, we set out and walked down a beautiful street, admiring the gorgeous trees and the houses. About 30 minutes in, we though we should be seeing more people and more french quartery things, so we check the map. It took us a few minutes to find our location because we weren't close to the FQ at all, we'd walked 30 minutes in the wrong direction! Well, no matter, I had a Barq's Red Cream Soda (think Rock 'n Rye) for the walk back, and we went to an awesome Mexican restaurant for dinner.
One interesting thing to note about New Orleans; it's 11 feet below mean sea level. How did it get that way you ask? Well, New Orleans is built on the Mississippi delta, a fundamentally unstable structure that is only maintained above the sea because of constant inputs from the river. The river here is confined to its channel through the city, so no more sedimentation; the city is sinking! To maintain that situation, it has massive levees and a network of I think about 30 pumphouses to pump the groundwater out. Even with that, it has a water table only a few feet below the ground. Because of that, it's trees (and there are millions of them) all have roots very near the surface, which makes for some amazing root masses at the base of the trees. Without all of these trees, the pumphouses would have to work a whole lot harder, so I'd wager New Orleanseans don't just cut down a tree any ole' time they want. So, the streets are shaded by massive branches that you could use to get into the second story window of houses across the street!