Honeymoon: Wednesday

22 Aug Honeymoon: Wednesday

We woke up at our usual and leisurely time and wandered to a gelato place owned by this adorable Italian man with long hair.  They had the most amazing mango gelato which we ate atop our fresh waffle.  What a wonderful start to a day.

We then walked around the river walk and decided to take a ferry to Algiers.  Algiers is where my family is from and part of the reason I have such a love of New Orleans.  While we decided not to visit any family on our honeymoon it was very exciting for us to take a free ferry across the river and walk around an area, much of which was untouched by the hurricane, whose architecture is amazing and unique.  We also met a lovely Australian couple on the ferry.  It’s very quiet and homey when we got to Algiers, yet there are areas that are very run down.  In our walking we found a music shop.  We went in and began looking at guitars and cajons (box drums) made by cajuns.  We were welcomed in and they were very excited to see us.  The man then said “I’ve seen you two before… You’re from around here!  You live here, right”  It didn’t matter to us if he was just being kind or not we were ecstatic to be mistaken for locals.  Especially since chris spent the better part of the trip with a camera attached to him making us look even more touristy (despite him insisting he just looked like a photographer).  We simply smiled and said, “We wish we were from here!”

We spent a long time walking around and not seeing much of anything other than beautiful houses.  Finally a man, working on rebuilding a house, saw us and yelled down from the roof.  He asked if he could help us find something and I said “we want to find a place to eat lunch.  Someplace the locals go.” He mentioned that we needed to try the Dry Dock Cafe.

 We realized at that point just how far we had walked and decided to keep going to St. Bartholomew’s Cemetery, where I have family buried.  On the long and rocky walk there Chris’ sandal began to fall apart and finally broke completely.  He limped the remaining 10 blocks with a shoe and a half.  He was quite cranky, but we got to the cemetery and were amazed at how well kept it was.  It’s also unique to see above ground mausoleums and quite eerie to see your last name on a large tomb that holds many of your past family.  I can’t explain how quite Algiers is and how it felt, but we walked around a bit before heading back to have lunch.

Duct tape fixes everything

As we got to the Dry Dock Cafe we found a spot in a pub type atmosphere with signs everywhere and dark rich wood tones.  Our waitress spotted us and asked right off the bat if we were on our honeymoon.  It’s interesting to me how people know.  I took a moment to ask her for duct tape and she came over enthusiastically to help us fix Chris’ show for the trek home.  He ended up wearing the sandals the rest of the trip too.  We had an amazing meal and really enjoyed being right by the dock.  After lunch we hopped on the ferry back and headed for the aquarium.  Chris had never been in a tunnel aquarium before.  And the last time I was at this aquarium I was very young and had a fit when my parents told me to pet a shark.  I always regretted not being brave enough to do that so I knew I had to pet the stingrays when we had the chance.

Found him!

We then walked back to Jackson square where we found dinner. And alligator picante sauce. As I was researching things to do in New Orleans I found out about the swamp tours and the show “swamp people”  I then became obsessed and watched it often in preparation for our encounters (which were few). I knew I had to try eating the meat though (even though it was out of season). I was not disappointed. Yum.

Alligator from last season

This was also the place we tried raw oysters. We kept seeing signs everywhere and I swear I recall my dad eating them (though he denies it now) eating raw oysters was one of the most unique experiences of my life.  Chris and I are extremely glad we tried them.  And we’d encourage all of you to try them once.

Yum! Yum! Oysters!

However I’m pretty sure we’ll never eat them again unless it’s out of remembrance of this moment. I can safely say I have NEVER gagged over food before. Even peas when I was young. That was fake. This though? This was real. I have never tasted anything so salty, fishy, and sandy in my life.

Fishy!

Chris got it down like a champ, but we finally figured out you have to have it on a cracker and with a TON of cocktail sauce.  We got down that entire platter. After that we relaxed a bit before grabbing some beers (which you can do anywhere in NOLA) and walked to preservation hall for a night of amazing jazz.  Chris and I have a mutual love of jazz and ever since we came across a preservation hall band vinyl record we knew we needed to see the current band.  We stood in line for an hour and met an older couple from the east coast.  We stayed for 3 of the 4 sets and enjoyed every moment of it.  We then walked around bourbon street.  Which is very ADD for me to have so much music, sound, lights, people, etc.  in one place at one time.  I have a feeling that some of the integrity of the historic place has been lost though as you have to work to hear the jazz between karaoke night.