Goin' to New Orleans

We are off to New Orleans on Friday to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. I have spent HOURS at the dining room table surrounded by lists and maps and guide books and computer print outs. We’ve gotten advice from folks at eGullet and cookskorner and friends and co-workers. We’re going to be there for 3 ½ days and my initial restaurant list had 25 places on it – that would be approximately 7.14 restaurants a day! I’ve winnowed it down to only (ha) 14 places – that’s 4 places a day – MUCH more manageable.

I am so excited about this trip. I’ve never been to NOLA and Mr. Kim has only been once on a business trip. I have a tendency to romanticize places. I’m sure that when we eventually get to England that it will be just like an Agatha Christie mystery – manor houses, dotty and shrewd old ladies, kindly vicars and one charming village after another.
To me, New York, no matter how many times I actually am there, is stuck in the elegant, jazzy cocktail times of Nick and Nora Charles or Pam and Jerry North. When my good friend Lynn said she was going to NY for Christmas, I responded: “I have this impossibly romantic picture in my head of Christmas in NY - from watching too many movies, I'm sure. I mean, you probably didn't actually go dancing at the Stork Club with Myrna Loy and William Powell, right?”

So about half the time, when I am imagining this trip, I’m picturing a NOLA dripping with Southerness – sweet, hot days lazily sipping Sazeracs and watching the river drift by. I see a city with a certain sinister (but safe) charm.

Of course, since I’m ME and have a bizarre brain that can easily hold two completely opposite beliefs at the same time – I am also imagining the two of us mugged, knifed and lying bleeding in some dirty alley. This me sees NOLA the same way that many people see NYC – danger from every person, crime ridden and scary.

The actual experience will probably lie somewhere in between. So I’m packing a pretty, floaty dress….and my money belt!