Happy New Year’s! Happy end of “The Aughts” decade… We’ll see where the next decade will take us, but, as may be evident from the lapse in posting, we haven’t been traveling as much as we’d like in this past year. While we didn’t manage to leave the country once, it felt like we did on a couple of our domestic trips. In January I went to Kaua’i, Hawai’i with a high school friend, and while I didn’t write about it here, there are a bunch of photos on the simonica.smugmug.com – January 2009 Gallery. In April we flew to Las Vegas and then drove to Death Valley, which was extremely beautiful and an inspiration for us to see more canyons and deserts. June marked the start of our epic wedding season – SIX weddings in locations including Point Reyes, CA, Kennebunkport, ME, Toby Hill, VT, Lodi, CA, and two in Brooklyn, NY – with the last ones happening in October.
These weddings provided welcome trips to cities and towns that we don’t normally get to go to, and helped me see more of my parents and grandparents in Massachusetts, not to mention our amazing friends who were either getting married or toasting with us. The last wedding that Simon and I went to together – I couldn’t make the last last one as I had to get back for classes – was particularly notable because it took place at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, where we had gotten married back in 2006 – the start of SiMonica’s Voyage!
Maha'ulepu Beach, Kaua'i
Hiking in Death Valley
Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA
Amazing cake topper at Phil and Tina's wedding in Brooklyn
The non-wedding travel we did was a long weekend trip to Durham, NC to see friends, a trip to Baltimore to see my brother and his wife (I was solo on this one), a weekend trip to Big Sur, CA for some natural beauty, a long weekend trip to Humboldt County for some fantastic hiking along the Lost Cost and biking on the Avenue of the Giants, and finally, a trip to the East Coast to spend Christmas with my parents, grandparents and good old friends. We decided to take advantage of the timing of this last trip to sneak in a two day side trip to New Orleans on our way to Boston, and we were SO GLAD we did!
Narrowly missing various weather related travel issues, we arrived in New Orleans on a red-eye on Sunday, 12/20 and had our first glimpse of the friendliness of the people there when the woman in the row behind us in the plane saw us looking out the window onto the flooded bayou, and thanked us for coming to visit! Our accommodations where perfect for us, and had come recommended by friends who had traveled in NOLA (as people call it) earlier this year. I should note that I didn’t read a single thing about New Orleans before our arrival, aside from what I’d read tangentially during Katrina, with the exception of the plethora of tips we received from various friends who had been there before…that’s what this city does to you, it fills you up with places, food, drinks and music that you can’t stop yourself from recommending to whoever will listen. (Thanks to all of you who sent us tips, they were great!) As we are chatty people, we also tried to get as many tips from locals that we talked to in shops, bars, restaurants, wherever. It was a remarkably friendly city, and everyone wanted to share their favorite spots for po’ boys, big band jazz, hamburgers, fried chicken… the list goes on, but you get the idea. Overall, everyone who we talked to, both people whose families were in NOLA for generations to the artist in her 20s who had just moved there from Brooklyn, was enthusiastic and excited to rebuild the city. The devastation from Katrina was visible both in the destroyed houses and empty lots, the bitterness people expressed describing their stories of evacuating and then watching people being left without food and water for days, not to mention other horrors that were described in a book I’d read a week before our trip (Zeitoun by David Eggers), and in the obvious decline in population. However, the strength that was generated by those who returned to the city to rebuild and of those who enthusiastically moved from elsewhere to start a new life in this city, created a fantastic feeling of hope, even for hardened cynics like myself. There seems to be great support for artists to live and work there, and when you combine that with a city with such a rich history for arts and music and fun, it’s a wonderful combination. A poet we heard at a bar, Vaughn’s, in the Bywater neighborhood, aptly described the people of the city as all being a diaspora from somewhere or another – with a nod to the native americans who were there first. Those “somewhere or another” places have influenced every part of the city we could see, from the tiles on the roofs to the various accents and dialects we heard and tried to decipher.
Bywater Neighborhood, New Orleans
I actually wrote a list of all the places I had been to that New Orleans reminded me of in some way, and it’s pretty long. I’ll list it here for all you who liked lists, in no particular order – Kaua’i and the Dominican Republic -because of the tropical plants and relaxed atmosphere, Hanoi, Vietnam – with the amazing food culture and the French Colonial influences on the streets and city design, Kerala, India -because of the role that water and rivers plays in the geography, the Mekong River – because of the vastness of Mississippi River, specifically it reminded me of the Mekong along Phnom Penh, Shanghai – the architecture of the French Concession in Shanghai is quite similar to parts of NOLA, and finally Spain – because of the architectural influences left from when NOLA was held by the Spanish.
Phew, for those of you who don’t like lists, that’s it…but I thought it was interesting to see a city that reminded me of such varied places in countries and cities around the globe – I guess there’s colonialism to “thank” for that… Should you find yourself with a free weekend and a hankering for some fun, get yourself to New Orleans! The activities I would highly recommend include: renting bikes and exploring smaller side streets, as well as biking through the lower 9th ward, the garden district and the ride along the levee heading toward Jefferson Parish; listening to music at Vaughn’s and DBA; eating (everything we had was good, and we’re pretty picky due to the spoils of the bay area); drinking amazing cocktails; and, finally, chatting with locals.
For those of your who are wondering if we’ve lost our international wanderlust, don’t worry! We’re planning a trip to Argentina in May to visit Simon’s sister who will be living in Buenos Aires for a semester, and to explore the country – our first time in South America… we only need to figure out a way to quit our jobs again… this trip will only be a paltry 2-3 week adventure.
