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Back from New Orleans
Mar. 31st, 2015 01:09 pmWe took off last week for a much needed vacation/convention trip to New Orleans for Saints and Sinner Literary Festival, seeing friends and general bumming around. Some high points:
- The weather! Green growing things! Warmth! It was lovely. :-)
- Staying at the Auld Sweet Olive B&B again and getting to see all the positive changes in the Faubourg Marigny. I was last there about a year and half after Katrina and the area was hit pretty hard. There's still aways to go, but the New Orleans Co-op, the botanika, the performance space and Cafe Istanbul across the street are all wonderful additions since I was last there. Also, yay, a credit union to support the neighborhood. The B&B's changed hands since I stayed there last but the current owner is very nice and quite LGBT-friendly, as well as being an interesting person (Emmy Award-winning screenwriter, award-winning baker, etc.).
- Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865 at the Historic New Orleans Connection Museum is very powerful and well worth checking out (also free), as is the show next door on local artists.
- The Sculpture Garden in City Park is lovely.
- We liked our VIP City tour guide, Jared, who took us around the French Quarter, the Garden District, Treme, the Lower 9th Ward, City Park, one of the cemeteries and the levees. He had a number of insights about the impact of Katrina and class and racial divisions in the city, which were thought-provoking and worth hearing (not to mention surprising in a tour guide).
- The Pharmacy museum in the French Quarter is worth a gander. I also liked Faulkner House Bookstore, Beckham's Bookstore and Crescent City Books (those being the stores we stopped in at).
- Special shout out to Good Feet Shoe Store in the French Quarter which saved me when I discovered that I packed two left sandals (I have two pairs of my favorite walking sandal).
- The food!
- And finally, Saints and Sinners has shrunk a bit since I was there last and seems more under the umbrella of the Tennessee Williams Festival, which I am less interested in. But I did meet some writers and did some networking and went to a good group reading and some okay panels. Plus getting restaurant tips from local author Mary Griggs, so it was worth going to the con for that alone.