Wednesday, January 20, 2010. New Orleans.Went first to the French Quarter, then here and there until I ended up at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The museum has a decent medium-sized collection, particularly of French paintings from the Renaissance through the 19th century.
What a charming city this is, particularly in its older parts. The lure isn't so much to see lots of specific tourist items such as museums, as to simply be here, surrounded by the architecture and in the shade of the gigantic oak trees. In the French Quarter of course their lifeblood is tourists, but I always wonder when I look around what it is I am really missing while being directed at restaurants and souvenir shops and balconies hung with Mardi Gras decorations. It's like a magician's sleight of hand. Watch over here, while the reality takes place behind my back. That's why I like walking past junkyards and warehouses and housing projects, too. But like anyone else, I would rather live on St. Charles Avenue than out on Chef Menteur Highway.
2 comments:
Reality is both fore and aft. W
Thanks for the Mick by Warhol! I caught up on Google Earth and it's amazing to see how much that little stretch of Irish Bayou with water on both sides reminded me of the oyster shacks at La Tremblade, near Saint Palais, including the flattened out trees from the "Grande Tempête de '99". Construction codes vary even between "developed" countries and we are always amazed here to see how much more damage private houses suffer in the US than here. There were a lot of "Ten year later" interviews on the day after Christmas last month and people are still traumatized. The scars on the landscape are still visible, not so much on human construction.
The original Gentilly is right by on the former Red Belt and Boulevard Jourdan is right inside the Périf across from Gentilly!
Isn't internet just great? Without it, Judy might have seen you out in Bayou Sauvage but never known what you were up to!
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