Louisiana Wrap-Up

My Louisiana road trip all too quickly came to an end.

Even though I started the trip with a number of misgivings, I realized rather quickly that all my worries had been for naught.

Every person I encountered was open and friendly and every place I stopped was welcoming and interesting.

In fact, I was sad to see the trip come to an end and I'm already plotting a return to New Orleans.

It's impossible to recount every last detail of a trip, whether through words or photographs, but in this blog post I'm going to give it a shot. Here goes:

Number of turkey encounters:

One. His name was Gus.

Number of alligator encounters:

One. His name was Charlie.

Number of hornet encounters:

Unfortunately, one.

Number of ghost encounters:

Fortunately, one.

My first two nights in Louisiana, we stayed at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, which is rumored to be haunted by 13 different ghosts.

On a tour of the hotel's upper floors, we passed through an event space used for business lunches and wedding dinners. The room was empty. Believe me. We walked through the whole space, poking our heads into the corners and around the blinds to check out the city view from all the windows.

We'd just left the room, just left that empty room, when a loud crash of dishes sounded from directly behind.

We beat it out of there.

Number of times I was called "ma'am":

I stopped counting and eventually came to accept the word's presence and the fact that it was being used to address me.

I do, however, feel sorry for the first young man who called me ma'am. "Ma'am?!" I jumped. "Did you just call me ma'am?"

"Yes ma'am," he repeated, his cheeks flushing. He was a clean-cut cutie, a restaurant manager with a recent college degree.

"I'm not old enough to be called ma'am," I instructed him in what I thought was a playful tone.

"I'm just trying to do as my mama said," he stammered. "She'd be real unhappy if I wasn't polite."

I backed off. He hadn't meant the word as an insult, and as I saw him fluster and blush I realized that I had just insulted him by insinuating that his choice of words had offended me.

Which leads me to...

Number of women I met who shared the same first name:

Let's see. There was Miss Kitty, Miss Laurie, Miss Cynthia, Miss Donna. That's four. Surely I'm forgetting a few ...

Number of Huge Ass Beers consumed:

None.

Number of mint juleps consumed:

One. It was my first, and I must say, probably my last. I think I'm more of a mojito girl.


Number of times we pulled through a daiquiri drive-thru:

Once.

As we left the big city behind we started seeing "Daiquiri Drive-Thru" signs on store fronts.

Turns out, it's perfectly legal to swing by the drive-thru and pick up some daiquiris to go. The filled-to-the-brim cups come sealed closed with packing tape. So long as the top remains unpunctured (this includes the use of a straw) then it's perfectly legal to drive about town with a daiquiri.

Number of times we encountered a police sobriety check point:

Once.

We spotted the flashing cop lights before we reached the check point and even though we'd done nothing wrong by going through a daiquiri drive through, we freaked out, pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot and promptly dropped the daiquiris in the trash.

I was disappointed to see the daiquiri go and yet it somehow seems very fitting that my one (and probably only) daiquiri drive-thru experience ended in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Number of bread pudding recipes tried:

Six.

The one that gets my vote for the top spot was the "White Chocolate Bread Pudding" served at The Grapevine in Donaldsonville.

Number of fried foods eaten:

Too many to count. But I did discover a previously unknown love for beignets, which are lumps of fried dough covered in heaping spoonfuls of powdered sugar served up with cafe au lait for breakfast.

And last but not least...

Number of new words learned:

One. And it's a good one ... coon-ass.

Jams and Jigs in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

Music. Music. And then more music. That's what the past 24 hours of my Louisiana road trip were all about.

We pulled into the town of Breaux Bridge yesterday evening, dumped our stuff at a local B & B, and then headed right back out for a night of fun.

We rolled into Mulate's, where a Cajun band was in full swing. The dance floor was in full swing, too. It didn't really seem to matter who you danced with, just so long as you danced.

There were couples dancing to be sure, but there were also moms twirling about with their babies on the floor in a sort of lullaby trance, sisters waltzing in pairs and dads teaching their wee ones basic steps.



The next morning, we got up bright and early for breakfast. Our goal was to arrive on the steps of Cafe des Amis at 7:30 am. When we arrived, we found that others had beat us there and a band was already inside warming up on stage.

Perhaps because the previous night had been spent taking in local music, I hadn't realized that our breakfast would also be spent taking in local music. I also didn't realize that I was in for the wildest breakfast outing ever.

The Saturday morning "Zydeco Breakfast" is a weekly event that local people obviously plan on attending. A $4 cover charge gets you in the door for dancing. If you don't mind waiting, you can try to get a table. But by and large, the majority of the people attending are there to dance.



And as if we hadn't already consumed enough coffee or tunes, we walked one block over to the local Breaux Bridge coffee shop, Coffee Break, where a creole jam session was just starting to pick up speed.

Swamp Tour, McGee's Landing, Louisiana

We loaded up on a air boat for an afternoon tour of the Atchafalaya Basin.

The basin looks like a really big lake. It's a spill over of river water as the Mississippi makes its way to the Gulf.

But looks can be deceiving. Even though it looks like a lake from the shore, or from the highway that passes directly over it, the basin is actually a swamp.

Cypress trees reach up and out of the water. Spanish moss hangs from their branches and sways in the wind, giving the trees an eerie sort of decaying air.

Alligators lurk. Sizable birds perch above. Crawfish populate the murky depths.

We boarded the air boats at McGee's Landing, making sure to eat lunch in the restaurant before heading out for our afternoon adventure.

And we would have stayed there overnight as well had the floating cabins not been completely and totally booked!

Me and You and a Man named Boo, Donaldsonville, Louisiana

Even though I'd love to spend more time in New Orleans, the city is not the reason I came to Louisiana.

Instead, I came to Louisiana to go on a road trip through Cajun country. The journey started early this morning with a stop at Starbucks to ensure we were properly hopped up on caffeine before we hit the road. We had about two hours of asphalt ahead of us before we'd pull into the town of Donaldsonville.

At first glance, Donaldsonville doesn't look like much. The streets are lined with rickety shotgun houses. The old Main Street drag seems a little down on its luck.

But stick around, scratch the surface, and suddenly, Donaldsonville turns into a sort of small town cultural mecca.

While many of the area homes looked as if they could do with a little (okay, a lot) of refurbishing, a massive catholic church loomed on the outskirts of downtown.

The Ascension of Our Lord Catholic Church looks like a building that should be in a big city. It seemed completely out of place in this scrappy-looking town. But that's kinda the point. It's symbolic of its people's faith. A member, a man who was introduced to us as Mr. Boo, gave us a tour of the cathedral.

We also stopped by Rossie's Frame Shop to check out the work of a local artist, Alvin Batiste. Turned out that Alvin was there, as he is every day because the frame shop is actually his studio.

He left his painting behind to talk with us, take us around and tell us about his work. He pointed out his favorite pieces and then played a little ditty for us on his guitar.

We also hit up The River Road African American Museum. The museum is small but mighty ... probably because its founder, Kathe Hambrick, is mighty herself.

A former corporate gal, she left the suit world behind to start a museum that would showcase the contributions of African Americans in Louisiana's Mississippi River valley and teach children about the hardships of slavery and the realities of the Underground Railroad.

It's evident the museum and its mission is her passion. She was there when we came in, as she is most day since she lacks a full staff, and showed us about her collections.

Our meager Starbucks breakfast had long worn off and we were ready for lunch before we wrapped up our Donaldsonville tour and headed on our way.

We got a table at the Grapevine Cafe and just as we started contemplating the menu, dark clouds rolled into town.

When the owner and chef herself made an appearance at our side, we gladly gave up our plan of a quick bite to eat and decided to let her select our meal. She stuffed us full and entertained us with tales as an afternoon rain fell and fell and fell outside.

Chillin with Che in the Big Easy

So I made it to "Nola." That's New Orleans, Louisiana.

Luckily I'm not here alone. My good buddy Che is -- of course -- here keeping me company.

I was so excited to have spotted my Che so early on in my Louisiana trip that I almost didn't notice the verbiage on the sign.

I certainly hope the store owners aren't implying that Che is a "Killer."

I'm pretty sure it was the "cigars" they were after, but when it comes to Che ...

Well, one can never be too sure.

What I can be sure about, however, is that after only one day, Louisiana has smashed all my preconceptions to little bits.

I am completely intrigued with the French Quarter and wish wish wish that I had days to explore the city, as opposed to just today, this one day, which was over and done with in a flash.

In fact, after walking just one block from my hotel, I found that I was chiding myself.

Why, why was it that I so long resisted a trip to New Orleans?

Prove Me Wrong, Louisiana

I'm off. Again.

June is turning into one big travel fest for me. I've been to New York and back, San Diego and back and today I head out for Louisiana.

I've never pictured myself going to Louisiana. Even prior to Katrina, New Orleans never beckoned me. The whole concept of Mardi Gras just didn't pull me in. Beads for boobs isn't my style. And the jazz? Well, sure. I'd go listen for a night, but I'm not an aficionado.

Images of a swampy bayou didn't call me either. As a Minnesotan, I've seen my fair share of mosquitoes. I don't exactly feel the need to travel in order to find more. And crawdads? Well, I'm kinda a picky eater. Digging through their petite little shells for a petite little morsel of meat ... again ... not my style.

And if I'm going to be completely honest, I have to admit that the North-South divide does lurk in my mind.

As I said, I'm a Minnesota girl. Born and raised. I'm a liberal, white, Minnesota girl (not exactly 'granola' but close) with an Asian husband, and even though the Civil War has long since passed, "The South" retains the ability to anger and frighten me.

So why am I going?

Because the opportunity came along.

Because I realize the irony involved in the fact that I would willing travel to Burma, but not to Louisiana.

Because I pride myself on having an open mind and refusing to travel in "The South" is not open-minded.

So stay tuned. Let's see if Louisiana can prove this Yankee chick wrong.

Monks, Bells and Chanting

The past week of my life was filled with monks, bells and chanting. It was also filled with family and travel.

We flew off to San Diego to attend a funeral for my husband's grandmother. It was an expected death (she was 93) and yet difficult as it was the passing of life nonetheless.

Hubby's grandmother, like hubby, was born in Vietnam. She arrived in the United States at the age of 60 and never learned much English. Her Buddhist faith was important to her and so her funeral was a traditional Buddhist funeral.

This entailed two days of services in which numerous groups of monks came and conducted ceremonies. As I mentioned, there was chanting. Seven hours (at least) worth of chanting (no exaggeration).

As all was conducted in Vietnamese, I was - at times - confused, bored, fascinated and haunted. And in the end I was deeply moved.

The Geography of Bliss

I just finished reading a book called The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.

The author, Eric Weiner, gets this idea to travel to counties where the people are notoriously happy (or in one case notoriously sad). His goal is to determine whether or not the people living in these "happy countries" know something about the pursuit of happiness that the rest of us do not.

His quest takes him to Iceland, Switzerland, Thailand, Bhutan and more. In each place, the author (being a long-time NPR correspondent) gets hooked up with some sort of social expert. Perhaps he talks with a doctor, a professor, or a government official. And always, he wants to know: Why are the people here happy?

He also does a lot of just hanging out and talking to local people, getting their views on happiness as well.

While all this might sound stuffy and somewhat clinical, it's actually a very funny read. Weiner is witty, sarcastic and really quite self deprecating.

Does he ever unlock the happiness secret? Well, you'll just have to read the book and find out.

But the book did get me thinking about my very own geography of bliss. Where I have traveled, and once there, found myself crazy happy?

Here is my list, in no particular order:

1. Inle Lake, Myanmar (Burma)

2. Mui Ne, Vietnam

3. La Paloma, Uruguay

4. Machu Picchu, Peru

5. Buenos Aires, Argentina

6. Ang Thong National Park, Thailand

7. Valle de Bravo, Mexico

8. Pisco Elqui, Chile

9. Iguazu Falls, Argentina-Brazil

10. Rome, Italy

On Angelina Jolie and Virignia Woolf

I'm a sucker for Angelina Jolie.

I just can't help it. She fascinates me.

It's got nothing to do with Brad Pitt. I liked her long before he came along.

It's her international thing that draws me in. The adoptions. The philanthropy. The UN speeches. The pop-ups in far-away foreign lands.

Don't we all, on some level, wish we could jet about the globe doing good while enjoying the luxury of a private plane and looking all-out stunning?

Or maybe that's just me.

At any rate, she is my celebrity crush. I easily tune out the torrid Brittany news, but give me a magazine with A.J. on the cover and I'm all over it. So of course I bought the July 2008 Vanity Fair as soon as it hit the stands and greedily devoured the photos and accompanying article.

It wasn't until I had turned the last page that I flipped back to the cover and noticed the tiny print in the lower right corner. It was a quote by Virginia Woolf that I had never seen before, but with which I immediately identified.

It read:

As a woman I have no country. My country is the whole world.

Che Spotted in JFK

A trip is not a trip unless there is a Che-spotting.

That's my rule anyway.

On this most recent trip to New York to visit friends, I was so caught up in having quality bonding time with my long-time buddies that I nearly forgot all about my ongoing Che-spotting mission.

But no fear! This time, Che came to me.

As I rose to board my plane home in a busy JFK, a college-aged man pushed into line before me carrying "the" whopping 800-page Che Guevara biography.

I recognized the cover right away as the book sat on my bookshelf for many years. I bought it, determined to read the whole thing cover to cover, but the sheer size of the volume just overwhelmed. I never got more than 20 pages in and eventually I sold it to a used book store.


I would never have pegged the book's holder for a Che fanatic. Then again, most people wouldn't peg me as Che obsessed either.

I hope this ambitious reader makes it further through the book than I did!

Hot in the City

It's sooooooo hot here in New York! We've been dodging the heat (or trying to) for the past few days and today, as the temperature soared into the high 90s, Michelle and I ventured into Manhattan.

Were we crazy?

Maybe. The heat definitely felt oppressive as we walked the streets surrounded by towering concrete, but we had to come into the city; I needed to get back to JFK so that I could fly home.

Yet we are resourceful girls. Our plan to beat the heat was to while away some time in a nail salon getting manicures and then to waste away at Cafe Frida drinking Sangria.

Minne Soda

Hey Kelly.

Yeah?

What's your favorite kind of soda?

Fanta. What's yours?

Minne Soda.

And so goes the joke.

Over and over again.

It's pretty clever, really. Especially when you learn that the play on words is attributed to a four year-old.

The joke would never fly with a four year-old in Minnesota, a place where "soda" is faithfully called "pop." But I had to hand it to this East Coast kid. His Minne Soda joke was smart.

The four year-old in question is the son of my dear friend Michelle, who I've been staying with for a few days in her suburban New York home. For weeks she had been telling her son that I was coming to visit all the way from Minnesota. Unacquainted with U.S. geography, he heard something entirely different.

On Travel Friends and Travel

So I've made it to New York.

Not the city. The state. I'm here for five or so days, somewhere in suburbia.

It used to be that I traveled to the city once a year (sometimes twice) to hang with my good friends, travel buds, gals I picked up on the road who called Brooklyn and Manhattan home.

Now though, both are married, both are moms and both have left the urban congestion behind for the equally-maddening suburban kind.

It's a strange and glorious thing to visit travel buds on their home turf. It's perhaps even more of a strange and glorious thing to go into their now-established homes and eat meals with their husbands and kids.

Here are these women, my friends that I met while we were all off doing wild, adventurous things, and now they are (and I am too I suppose) settled and busy being adults, as opposed to busy becoming adults, which was what we were doing at the time of our meetings.

I was busy becoming an adult when I met Alison in Argentina.

And then Alison and I met Michelle in Peru.

And then Michelle and I traveled together through Guatemala.


And so it was that a series of Latin American jaunts brought these women, women I truly consider two of my soul mates, into my life.

What is it about people that you meet on the road? Since becoming a traveler, I've always marveled at how quickly bonds are formed on the move.

On this trip, I happened to ask Michelle what she thought it was that brought random travelers together.

"Vulnerability," she said. "It makes you hang on to people you don't know."

Lucky for me, I've been able to hang onto these friends longer than the trips on which I met them. It's been 10 (gulp) years now since I met them both.

Photos:

2008 - Celebrating our 10 year-reunion with calorie-packed, gourmet cookies in suburban New York.

1998 - Triumphant and tired after hiking four days to reach Machu Picchu. We really could have used those cookies way back then.

oneGirloneRide

I could tell, from my very first phone conversation with Kerry Madgett, that the article I was assigned to write about her and her daughter, E'leese, was going to be fun.

Kerry talked a mile a minute. She had to in order to keep up with the big ideas that were rolling around in her daughter's head.

Her daughter - E'leese - a 12 year-old recently graduated from 6th grade, is on a mission. She is planning to ride her Arabian horse in a loop through the state of Minnesota, raising money along the way, so that she can buy a 3,000-acre ranch and turn it into a vacation resort in rural Minnesota for soldiers and their families to use for free.

She is calling her quest oneGirloneRide and is blogging about her trip along the way.

While most parents might laugh off an idea such as this, E'leese's mom decided to support her daughter 200 percent, which meant quitting her job to become the PR manager for the endeavor, employing a lawyer to help incorporate the plan into a legal nonprofit, and accompany her daughter (who is only 12 after all) throughout the summer.

They are an amazing duo. Or trio if you count the horse. Or foursome if you count the dog, who is also going along.

Their journey starts on June 7, but it won't end until August 31.

If you'd like to learn more about their ride, or learn how to contribute funds, you can always check out my article on the subject:

On the Trail to Helping Veterans.