My visit to New Orleans - some general thoughts before the trip log itself
For the past three days, I've been hanging out and seeing the sights with phoenix_anew and jaklocke. Even after being warned (repeatedly) that the weather is warmer here than it is in Chicago, the nearly summer-like weather still caught me off guard. I think I might have sunburned myself a bit. And not every plan really panned out. On the other hand, I got to see many parts of a pretty interesting city, that's different and unique in a lot of respects. I got to sample some tasty local food. I got to see an honest-to-goodness plantation (like, the kind that had slaves). I got a tour of the French Quarter from a guy who seems to know as much about New Orleans as a I do about Chicago. And there are a whole bunch of novel experiences that I will get into later.
Besides - and perhaps most importantly - it was a celebration of the end of chemo-imposed travel restrictions. Being confined to Chicgoland, Northwest Indiana and part of Wisconsin kind of got to me. There were a lot of things I celebrated when I found out that I was in the clear, and finally being able to travel, to see my friends, was definitely a big one.
My train doesn't leave New Orleans until 1:41 PM. But because Angie (that's Phoenix_anew) has a regular 9-5 job that requires her to actually be at work at in the morning, she's going to drop me off at the New Orleans Union Terminal early in the morning, and I'm going to spend the next few hours trying to amuse myself. Which wouldn't be the first time I had to do something like that (waiting for your mode of public transportation as, for better or for worse, part of the whole public transit experience). I even have some tentative plans for how I can keep myself entertained.
My return train is arriving in Chicago at 9:00 AM, assuming the schedule doesn't get delayed too badly. I'm going to go home to drop off my stuff, make lunch and then, it's straight back to work. Got a board meeting to attend that very evening.
I've already started uploading some photos on my flickr stream, but it's going to be a while before I upload everything. I don't even know how many photos I'm going to take on the trip back. But it will be more than a few. And I will try, really try to pare it down into something manageable on this here LJ.
This is most likely going to be my last post before I return to Chicago. There are a lot of things that I will get into in the trip log, but for now - a couple of quick takeaways.
Besides - and perhaps most importantly - it was a celebration of the end of chemo-imposed travel restrictions. Being confined to Chicgoland, Northwest Indiana and part of Wisconsin kind of got to me. There were a lot of things I celebrated when I found out that I was in the clear, and finally being able to travel, to see my friends, was definitely a big one.
My train doesn't leave New Orleans until 1:41 PM. But because Angie (that's Phoenix_anew) has a regular 9-5 job that requires her to actually be at work at in the morning, she's going to drop me off at the New Orleans Union Terminal early in the morning, and I'm going to spend the next few hours trying to amuse myself. Which wouldn't be the first time I had to do something like that (waiting for your mode of public transportation as, for better or for worse, part of the whole public transit experience). I even have some tentative plans for how I can keep myself entertained.
My return train is arriving in Chicago at 9:00 AM, assuming the schedule doesn't get delayed too badly. I'm going to go home to drop off my stuff, make lunch and then, it's straight back to work. Got a board meeting to attend that very evening.
I've already started uploading some photos on my flickr stream, but it's going to be a while before I upload everything. I don't even know how many photos I'm going to take on the trip back. But it will be more than a few. And I will try, really try to pare it down into something manageable on this here LJ.
This is most likely going to be my last post before I return to Chicago. There are a lot of things that I will get into in the trip log, but for now - a couple of quick takeaways.
- I realized during Failcon that phoenix_anew and tweelore had more in common than I thought. This trip has convinced me that, if geographical distances weren't an issue, they could well have been good friends. Or they would've hated each other.
- jaklocke is pretty impressive when he's performing live.
- It's interesting how much I've come to accept Chicagoland architecture as "normal" American architecture. The architecture in New Orleans metropolitan area is informed by very different traditions, so their "normal" architecture is more different than what I've seen in Chicago, Indiana and Wisconsin than you'd think.
- I can definitely see how historic New Olreans inspired so much vampire fiction.