I arrived in New Orleans late Saturday night via Amtrak (more on that in another post, hopefully). Got checked into where I’ll be staying for the next five weeks, and I like it quite a bit. It’s out at the very edge of the French Quarter, and is clearly an industrial conversion. I don’t know what it was, as they’ve gut-renovated the building for residential use, but the 15-ish foot ceilings suggest warehousing or studio space in the past.
It is interesting seeing how some of the construction has compensated for the height. The doorframes are standard width, but about 10 feet tall so that they don’t feel “too far” from the ceiling. This does make them feel skinny since the proportions are off. The bedrooms have ceiling fans which still have their pull-cords still installed, but no human could ever reach them without a ladder so the controls are also built into the wall.
Overall, I suspect that I’ll be really comfortable here.
On Sunday I decided to explore the city a little bit, and walked into the French Quarter. The contrast with downtown Atlanta is extreme. The streets around this part of New Orleans have plenty of traffic on them, even the super-narrow one-way streets. Except for the streets that are closed to vehicle traffic and given over to pedestrians entirely. The architecture really does match the way that it’s depicted in movies and TV, though a lot of it is pretty chill.
Not chill? Bourbon Street. It’s almost entirely given over to bars dedicated to live music, strip clubs, and daiquiri shacks. So many daiquiri shacks. Those seem roughly evenly split between that have chosen fried chicken as their accompaniment for sweet frozen alcohol, and those that have decided to serve pizza.
Funnily enough, it’s as if all the live music joints along the street aren’t enough, and there are plenty of people busking along the street. I think I passed no fewer than three people doing bucket percussion.
I enjoyed my walk down the street, but definitely had the thought that “I’m too old for this”. So I ended up finding dinner a few blocks away where I had some really excellent jambalaya with some quite excellent beignets for dessert. Prices for restaurants were a little higher than I expected (not unreasonable, just closer to tourist prices than local prices). I’ll have to explore a little farther afield to figure out if that’s the average for the city, or just this part of it.
One day down, and it’s only made me excited about spending a month here.
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