One lazy Saturday

The first big news of the day: Both my Social Security card and my Green Card came in the mail yesterday so I can officially leave the country whenever I want to. I can't wait for a visit home... I feel like it's been forever since I was on Canadian soil.

Anyway, not much has been going on with us this week but we did take some pics around town last Saturday and I thought I might as well post them. It was a pretty typical weekend for us in New Orleans, as in it was very hot and very humid, but we managed to spend a large portion of it just hanging out in City Park, one of my favourite places in the city.

The park has over 1,300 acres just above Mid-City, about a mile from where we live. Its grounds are home to a botanical garden, golf course, amusement park, stables and a sculpture garden, as well as the New Orleans Museum of Art and a very good restaurant called Ralph's On the Park.

RJ and I mainly go to the park to play tennis at their big outdoor complex, or, like we did this past Saturday, we go with dog and just wander the many paths and fields that make up the main part of the park. One thing that amazes me whenever we go is that the park, especially the walking paths, are never very crowded. Not many people in the city seem to go to City Park when you compare it to other urban parks in major cities. It's too bad, it really is a highlight in my slice of the city.

We're in the middle of stinging caterpillar season and the park was full of them that day so we had to watch where we stepped. They have small stingers all over and they leave them embedded in your skin if you touch them at all. It's actually quite hard to avoid them as they are literally EVERYWHERE in April in May and they like to climb up trees and then fall on you from above. It hurts like anything.

After we had dropped the dog off at home, we decided to take a drive down through the Marigny and then over to the French Quarter. The Marigny is a trendy, young neighbourhood - sort of like the Quarter before the tourists got to it, and populated with many artists, writers and musicians. The nightlife in the Marigny happens mainly on four blocks on Frenchman St., with plenty of bars and tons of live music venues. I've also heard that during Mardi Gras, this is where the locals have their own party, away from the obnoxious frat-boy types. The area is mainly residential with rows of tightly packed shotgun houses and creole cottages in painted in an array of very bright colours.

The picture to the right here I just had to take. We came across this family touring the Marigny via people movers - is that what you call them? Anyway, you can only see three of them in this picture but there was about six of them just zooming around. Hilarious.It was getting too late in the day to be able to drive easily around the French Quarter and we were getting hungry, so we stopped at the edge of the Quarter to wait in line for seats at our favourite burger place, Port of Call. This was the first place I ever ate at in New Orleans, on my first trip down here and it blew my mind even back then. I remember that at first glance inside I was completely weirded out by the whole place which is decorated in a nautical theme with every corny prop imaginable, complete with a rope net covering the entire restaurant ceiling. The fact that we had to wait for half an hour before getting a seat at a very minimal wooden picnic table had me thinking that RJ was crazy for bringing me there. Then the food arrived and I was completely converted. At Port of Call they really only cook up steaks, potatoes and burgers, and the burgers are what everyone goes nuts for. I would crawl over broken glass for one of these - seriously, that good. It has spoiled me for any other burger. A very satisfying end to a great day.