Did you know that alligator eggs sell for between $4 and $28 a piece? This year they sold for $12 a piece. Alligators have between 45-60 eggs per cycle, and if they’re larger gators they can have up to 80-90 eggs. If you hold an egg up to the light and there’s a stripe in the shell, it means it’s been fertilized. If one egg has been fertilized, all eggs in that batch have been fertilized. Any egg over 88 degrees (don’t ask me how they take the temperature) will be a boy and any egg under 85 degrees will be a girl and the in between degrees are anyone’s guess. Alligators are color blind and have an affinity for white because when baby white herons are learning to fly, many of them fall from the nest into the swamp and the alligators eat them, so they equate white with food. Mistletoe grows rampant in the swamps of Louisiana, but they are a parasite plant and will suck all of the nutrients from their host tree and kill it. “Bed bugs” came from the time when mattresses would be stuffed with moss, which carried bugs. At that time a mattress would have one strip of binding, and if you wanted a firmer mattress you would pull the binding tighter. If a guest was wearing out his/her welcome, you simply had to go into their room and tighten their mattress binding to the point of being rock hard and the message was sent. At the same time, people in the south would put a pineapple (which is a sign of welcome that is seen carved into many pieces of furniture) in their guest’s room, and if the pineapple started to brown, the guest knew it was time to leave!
These are just some of the things I learned on the swamp tour we took while we were in New Orleans. After a bit of an intense start (the guide told us about water moccasins and how poisonous they are and that they’ll sometimes fall from trees etc.. by the time he was through one woman was crying she was so frightened and Briana and Lily were glued together and covered in Cork and my jackets…) we spent an hour and a half air boating down canals and into the murky undergrowth of a huge swamp owned by Judge Eddie Dupayne. Although alligators have pretty much moved to the back of the swamp to begin hibernating, we did see a few babies and some wonderful birds and I was happy to trade the sighting of a “gator” for no snakes falling from trees and scaring the bejesus out of us.
New Orleans was incredible. As a surprise for Lily, my friend Robin and her daughter Briana, one of Lily’s best friends, met us in New Orleans. They stayed in the same hotel as we did and even managed to get the room next door. Lily had NO IDEA they were coming, and the moment when she opened the door and saw Briana was something I wish I could have recorded. We spent the next 2 ½ days walking, eating, listening to music. It has been my favorite city so far. One of the things I liked to do the most was just get on the trolley which runs down the middle of these boulevards and is old with wooden seats and these great big windows that you can open all the way up, and ride and look. The Garden District reminds me a lot of Lake Drive in Milwaukee, and the campuses of Tulane and Loyola are gorgeous. I’d go back in a heartbeat (except in the summer… hot hot hot hot.) The timing was perfect because there weren’t very many tourists … yet. Today marks the beginning of the VooDoo Festival, and by last night the crowds were gathering. Frenchmen Street, Bourbon Street, Decatur Street, Esplanade, just to name a few streets that we walked down. The girls got their fair share of bright lights and tight tights, and luckily are young enough to not really get the seedy side of things. They just thought it was funny!
We arrived in New Orleans on Tuesday and were lucky to check-in early. Once again, thanks to my mom, we had a spacious one-bedroom suite in the Garden District, right on St. Charles Avenue. Everyone was nice, if a bit laid back, and the weather was perfect. One day we got a bit lost looking for a museum and ended up walking for about 5 miles and seeing things we would never have been able to see intentionally. After going back to the hotel and cooling off, we jumped in a cab and went to Frenchmen Street on the recommendation of Reid Johnston (THANK YOU REID!!!) and had dinner at a place called Three Muses. There was a great blues trio named The Blues Gang, and we ate and drank and listened to music with mostly locals. Then we did the slow walk down Bourbon Street and caught the trolley back to our place. On the last night there the girls wanted to be left alone, so after getting them settled Cork and Robin and I walked down the block to Houston’s. It wasn’t our first choice because we equated it with the Houston’s in SF, total steakhouse men’s-man type of place. Instead it had the feeling of a supper club with a great jazz trio and great food, including one of the best soups I’ve ever had. The soup was called Mexico City and it was a clear broth from the liquids the chicken was cooked in with corn and pieces of chicken, fresh avocado pieces and cilantro, and then a mound of tomato dirty rice in the center. The idea was to take a bite of the rice and have that pick up the other ingredients on the way out of the bowl. OMG it was great. Oh, yeah, the hot fudge sundae wasn’t bad either (read really, really good) and it came with an extra little gravy boat of fudge on the side!