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kevin_standleeOur breakfast plans were foiled this morning because the places from which we'd planned to order apparently take Tuesdays off. Everyone needs a weekend, I guess. So I got some stuff from Starbucks to start our morning.
With the Saints-Dolphins NFL game behind us, an even bigger gridiron game approaches, and I saw hotels putting up signs welcoming the Sugar Bowl, which will be here on January 1. It dawns on me that even if Amtrak could have rebooked us into a bedroom heading west on January 1, it would have been very expensive to say here in New Orleans for the extra days, even though I could "work from home" here for several days if necessary.
A bit later in the morning, Lisa suggested that I see if it would be possible to order the big seafood feast from Mother's Restaurant for take-out. They weren't accepting online orders the last time I tried because they were too busy, but when I checked today, they were indeed taking orders, so I put one in. Now I've been burned too many times regarding pick-up times, so I expected that the quoted pick-up time was optimistic and we took our time walking the ~750 m each way over to Mother's. Along the way, we made an unexpected discovery.
This weathered obelisk at the corner of St. Charles Ave. and Common St. in New Orleans marks the southern end of the Jefferson Highway, a road that ran between New Orleans and Winnipeg but that was more or less abandoned in the early 20th century and is far more obscure than the Lincoln Highway or Route 66.
When we got to Mother's, the queue was halfway down the block, but to my surprise my order was ready, so I was able to minimize my time and didn't have to wait in an hours-long queue. We walked back to the hotel to have lunch.
Lisa had the Gulf Shrimp grilled in olive oil, while I had the Seafood Platter Extra Extra (shrimp, oysters, and catfish). We ended up with four sides shared between us: two red beans and rice, crawfish etoufee, and jambalaya. This was very good and very filling.
Full of seafood, we considered our options for today. We didn't really have much that we wanted to do, but given that we've had no chance to do laundry on this trip at all and that we can't really wash stuff out in the tub because it's so humid that nothing will dry out, we decided to give it a try. Yes, the trip is nearly over, but we still have several days left in the trip and no clean shirts, socks, slacks, or underwear.
Research on Google Maps found the nearest public laundromat, Suds Dem Duds, was about 1400 m away, not much farther away than the World War II Museum. We got all of our clothes that needed washing and stuffed them into my smaller rolling luggage. (The larger bag is mostly now full of Worldcon stuff.) We set off to the laundromat, swinging off the direct route down Bourbon Street because it was too crowded even during the daytime and instead walking down Dauphine Street.
After putting our clothes in for the wash cycle, we had about 30 minutes to kill and there is nowhere to sit in the cramped little laundromat. The place is staffed with people doing fluff-and-fold service for other customers, so we felt pretty comfortable leaving my empty rolling bag and our clothes to wash while we walked down to the French Market area and back.
Here we saw freight cars on the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad line, as well as the tracks of the out-of-service Riverfront Streetcar line.
We got back to the laundromat just as the wash timer was running out. Lisa relayed the laundry across from the washer to where I put it into the dryer, we set it for 30 minutes, and went walking again.
We could hear a locomotive horn in the distance. Had we headed back to the riverside immediately, we would have gotten a much better look at the NOPB rolling through with a train than we did in this case. You probably can't see it, but there is just a small bit of a blue-and-black NOPB locomotive in this shot.
With the laundry done, we rolled back down to Canal Street and back to our hotel room.
Later in the afternoon, we ordered dinner and also brought it back to the room. We ordered more seafood from Mother's, but Lisa's bad luck with food struck again, as I accidentally checked the wrong box on the order and her shrimp was fried instead of grilled. She doesn't like getting fried shrimp because in her experience, the breading is often dyed, and yellow food dye makes her sick.
Also today, we arranged a slightly extended checkout. The only good thing about not being on the Sunset Limited tomorrow as planned is that instead of being on a 9 AM train, we don't leave until 1:45 PM, so we should have plenty of time to get breakfast, do our packing, and get over to New Orleans UPT in time to check our luggage. Inasmuch as any luggage we check this time goes all the way to Emeryville, we will have to plan carefully to make sure we have everything we need on board for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights on board the City of New Orleans and California Zephyr.
As I was finishing composing this post, Lisa opened the curtains on our 11th-floor hotel room: heavy rain has moved into the area. Fortunately, the forecast for mid-day tomorrow is partly cloudy.
With the Saints-Dolphins NFL game behind us, an even bigger gridiron game approaches, and I saw hotels putting up signs welcoming the Sugar Bowl, which will be here on January 1. It dawns on me that even if Amtrak could have rebooked us into a bedroom heading west on January 1, it would have been very expensive to say here in New Orleans for the extra days, even though I could "work from home" here for several days if necessary.
A bit later in the morning, Lisa suggested that I see if it would be possible to order the big seafood feast from Mother's Restaurant for take-out. They weren't accepting online orders the last time I tried because they were too busy, but when I checked today, they were indeed taking orders, so I put one in. Now I've been burned too many times regarding pick-up times, so I expected that the quoted pick-up time was optimistic and we took our time walking the ~750 m each way over to Mother's. Along the way, we made an unexpected discovery.
This weathered obelisk at the corner of St. Charles Ave. and Common St. in New Orleans marks the southern end of the Jefferson Highway, a road that ran between New Orleans and Winnipeg but that was more or less abandoned in the early 20th century and is far more obscure than the Lincoln Highway or Route 66.
When we got to Mother's, the queue was halfway down the block, but to my surprise my order was ready, so I was able to minimize my time and didn't have to wait in an hours-long queue. We walked back to the hotel to have lunch.
Lisa had the Gulf Shrimp grilled in olive oil, while I had the Seafood Platter Extra Extra (shrimp, oysters, and catfish). We ended up with four sides shared between us: two red beans and rice, crawfish etoufee, and jambalaya. This was very good and very filling.
Full of seafood, we considered our options for today. We didn't really have much that we wanted to do, but given that we've had no chance to do laundry on this trip at all and that we can't really wash stuff out in the tub because it's so humid that nothing will dry out, we decided to give it a try. Yes, the trip is nearly over, but we still have several days left in the trip and no clean shirts, socks, slacks, or underwear.
Research on Google Maps found the nearest public laundromat, Suds Dem Duds, was about 1400 m away, not much farther away than the World War II Museum. We got all of our clothes that needed washing and stuffed them into my smaller rolling luggage. (The larger bag is mostly now full of Worldcon stuff.) We set off to the laundromat, swinging off the direct route down Bourbon Street because it was too crowded even during the daytime and instead walking down Dauphine Street.
After putting our clothes in for the wash cycle, we had about 30 minutes to kill and there is nowhere to sit in the cramped little laundromat. The place is staffed with people doing fluff-and-fold service for other customers, so we felt pretty comfortable leaving my empty rolling bag and our clothes to wash while we walked down to the French Market area and back.
Here we saw freight cars on the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad line, as well as the tracks of the out-of-service Riverfront Streetcar line.
We got back to the laundromat just as the wash timer was running out. Lisa relayed the laundry across from the washer to where I put it into the dryer, we set it for 30 minutes, and went walking again.
We could hear a locomotive horn in the distance. Had we headed back to the riverside immediately, we would have gotten a much better look at the NOPB rolling through with a train than we did in this case. You probably can't see it, but there is just a small bit of a blue-and-black NOPB locomotive in this shot.
With the laundry done, we rolled back down to Canal Street and back to our hotel room.
Later in the afternoon, we ordered dinner and also brought it back to the room. We ordered more seafood from Mother's, but Lisa's bad luck with food struck again, as I accidentally checked the wrong box on the order and her shrimp was fried instead of grilled. She doesn't like getting fried shrimp because in her experience, the breading is often dyed, and yellow food dye makes her sick.
Also today, we arranged a slightly extended checkout. The only good thing about not being on the Sunset Limited tomorrow as planned is that instead of being on a 9 AM train, we don't leave until 1:45 PM, so we should have plenty of time to get breakfast, do our packing, and get over to New Orleans UPT in time to check our luggage. Inasmuch as any luggage we check this time goes all the way to Emeryville, we will have to plan carefully to make sure we have everything we need on board for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights on board the City of New Orleans and California Zephyr.
As I was finishing composing this post, Lisa opened the curtains on our 11th-floor hotel room: heavy rain has moved into the area. Fortunately, the forecast for mid-day tomorrow is partly cloudy.
