Thursday, March 21, 2024
Vacation day 3 of 9. In The Old 77. Woke to the sound of garbage trucks. Ate one sumo orange. I visited the hotel gym for a while. Breakfast in our room: cereal with milk, water to drink. Patrick discovered another room problem: a staple sticking up from the floor. A woman at the front desk graciously apologized and gave us a small compensation for which we were grateful. Patrick bought RTA Jazz passes for us, and we walked and rode the ferry to Algiers Point. Second breakfast at Congregation Coffee: we shared one chocolate croissant and a hot honey tahini latte. Ferry return. In the French Quarter we stopped briefly to watch a band play and walked to and visited The Historic New Orleans Collection, seeing mostly Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art and some of the French Quarter History Galleries. We walked Royal Street across the French Quarter, encountering Karl S with whom we chatted briefly. Patrick and I continued to Frenchman Street and lunched at Ayu: potato leek soup with bread, egg salad croissant sandwich, canned sparkling water. All food and drink were delicious. We walked to New Orleans Jazz Museum for Piano Hour presented by the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park: Saskia's Little Big Band. The performance was delightful. Upon exiting we encountered light rain that had been predicted to start later than it actually did. We walked part of the French Market under cover then waited for the streetcar at Ursulines Station. We rode to North Peters Station then walked the rest of the way to The Old 77, stopping briefly at Lafayette Mini Mart for bottled water. Patrick napped while I caught up on journaling. Rode Lyft to Commander's Palace where we met writer Lucian C for dinner. This was our first time meeting in person. We talked about writing and editing, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, graphic design, the history of desktop publishing, web design, various writers, pronunciation of words, Toronto and Canada, and more. Afterwards we three rode Lyft to Bar Marilou and had a round of drinks. Lucian departed, and Patrick and I returned to The Old 77.