One of the best parts of any trip is anticipating it. Right now, I am planning to revisit New Orleans, a city I haven’t been to since the early 1990s. I was there so long ago I didn’t take pictures. I rarely took pictures back then. What I have are memories of watching brides, one hour after the other, pull up in fancy cars to St. Louis Cathedral, float into the church and then emerge, married, about 45 minutes later. Visiting New Orleans now, I will remember to record it.
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I still remember the beignets at Café du Monde, eating turtle soup with sherry (wasn’t even a vegetarian back then), drinking hurricanes on the street, and being asked to move along by the police when I was sitting with a friend on a levee just watching the Mississippi River go by. I remember the water being brown. I remember not wanting to fall in. I remember wanting to visit New Orleans again.
I remember taking a street car to the Garden District and trying to find Anne Rice’s house. I remember going into one cemetery and being afraid of the red Xs and chicken bones and the intimidating fellows in the back wearing what looked like crumpled stovepipe hats. I remember being served by outrageous drag queens at a night club, I remember learning that the city really does sleep as I was walking through Jackson Square in some very early hours of the morning. I remember visiting Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. I still have the doll I picked up there.
To help me remember all that was and all that’s happened since then, I’m reading Andy Peter Antippas’s A Guide to the Historic French Quarter, Susan Larson’s Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans, Carolyn Morrow Long’s New Orleans Voudou Priestess, and Fodor’s 2015 New Orleans.
Looking to visit New Orleans now, I look forward to seeing the National WWII Museum and hope to get in to Preservation Hall. I’d love to visit Brad Pitt’s Make It Right houses. Mostly, I’m curious whether my recollection of New Orleans reflects the city’s current reality.
—Lori Tripoli