New Orleans Part 4: Washboard Playin'!

One of the highlights of the trip for everyone was when we saw the Bourbon Street Cajuns play at Tropical Isle in the French Quarter. They are this super-fun zydeco trio that includes a guy named Timmy who plays the washboard. He also takes lots of folks from the audience and lets them play a washboard, too. So imagine our delight when he selects our very own Vogel to play with him. Awesome.

I let Kari take the camera and she went to town, capturing lots of priceless moments of Vogel workin' those spoons.


Vogel and Timmy.


Side shot!


I left this one relatively un-cropped so you can get a bit of local flavor. Check out the dude on the far left and the hair on the woman next to him.


Well, now she's just showing off a bit. Also take notice of the woman in green in the back right of the picture. She was non-so-affectionately dubbed "Butt Sweat" by our group because, well, her shorts showed a nasty big, old wet spot on her bum.


Butt Sweat was also a washboard hogger, folks. She kept trying to get another turn to play it. She literally took it off one woman and insisted she get another turn. You could tell Timmy and the band didn't like her. Once Vogel took over, Butt Sweat was not happy and shot some real daggers at our Vogsie. Kari tried to sneak a shot or two of the unhappy woman, but didn't have the greatest luck. Here she is, though, no doubt telling her group, "You see that? I have much better spoon playing ability than that bitch." But enough about her...


Hey now--whose hairy arms are those?


Is this some redneck flirting going on?


Afterwards, before we left, I snapped this photo of Waylon, the band's leader and fiddle player, Vogel, and Timmy. And you should know that right before I took this, Waylon asked if he could play "connect the dots" with Vogel's freckles. I feel icky just typing that.

Apparently, I am not the first to document fun encounters with these guys. Check out this youtube clip.

New Orleans Part 3: The Food

In honor of Amber, who creates the best "food porn" posts, I'll put together this mini-post on some of the food we enjoyed in New Orleans.

We had breakfast one morning at the famous Cafe Du Monde and enjoyed, of course, beignets and coffee.


Now I had the best of intentions to take pictures of the beignets, but what can I say? They disappeared quickly and all that was left was this huge pile of sugar.


Vogel and I each ordered a really yummy cafe au lait.

That same day, we had lunch at Drago's, a restaurant in our hotel. Someone gave us the tip to try the charbroiled oysters, so we did.


Awesome. The best thing we ordered that day, I think.

We did make a mistake at Drago's though, by not realizing just how big their po boys are.


Here's mine: a portobello mushroom sandwich with sweet potato fries. It was pretty good, but could have fed two people and then some. And each of us ordered a sandwich. You think the waitress would have warned us...

I don't have any more food pictures, but can tell you that we had dinner one night at NOLA, thanks to a recommendation from Amber's husband, Mike. It was awesome! Thanks, Mike!

UPDATE: While we're on the subject of food porn, check out this lovely blog all about lunch (and I am quite serious when I use that adjective--check out the quality of the pictures).

New Orleans Part 2: Sight-seeing

Sorry this has taken me so long, but I am finally going to create a couple more posts with pictures from New Orleans. (You can find Part I here, although it's a really short post.) I didn't take too many pictures that would fall in the sight-seeing genre, but here are a few:


The cathedral in Jackson Square. (This is a pretty typical tourist photo of New Orleans, I think.)


Another shot of Jackson Square.


Some houses/stores in the French Quarter.


A stop that really excited us as literature nerds: Faulkner House Books, a store located in the house where Faulker wrote Soldier's Pay. Of course, we did a bit of shopping there, too. I bought this book, which I am dying to read, although I haven't had the chance to start it yet. Maybe this summer?


Here's the sign on the outside of the building.


Here's Vogel posing in front of a weird statue down by the river front.


Pose Part Two: Where she displays the modesty she wishes the statue was showing. (The statue is called "Old Man River" and you can read a bit about it here.)

4Cs Panel

Just a preview of a longer post to come: here's a picture of our panel, taken right after our presentation. We look happy, right? (Well, Rita doesn't look happy, but pregnancy is doing a real number on her digestive system and we had quite a few "Hold on, I need to run to the bathroom" moments, so maybe that explains the look on her face.)


Left to right: Kari, Rita, Vogel, and Heidi.