As the pictures show, it was a gorgeous day when we left and there were a lot of people out and about.
We sat in the upstairs garden room, overlooking the magnificent oak tree in the courtyard. We were seated next to four women in the 50s (and maybe 60s) that were having quite the time together. Our food was really decent, but it was really the ambiance that made it such a lovely lunch. We were there for about 1.5 hours and if we return, I'd do it again.
We attempted to go shopping on Magazine Street but we failed to figure out where the best shopping was and instead we were wandering aimlessly. We finally found a couple of shops but it wasn't really what we were looking for and I was starting to have GERD from lunch so we decided to head back to the hotel to rest before going out for the night.
As you can see, sunset from our balcony was pretty nice. The building across the way had already put up Christmas lights so it was a nice way to ease into the holidays.
That night we decided to hit up Frenchman Street for some live music. Our main destination was the Blue Nile club as Kermit Ruffins (a featured musician from one of my favorite shows, Treme) was set to play at 10:30 p.m. (or 11 p.m., depending on whether you believed their website or the door man). We really enjoyed the soulful singer that was on stage when we went in, but once she wrapped up it was over an hour before Kermit and the BBQ Swingers took the stage. In that time, obviously, more people had crowded into the bar and there was A LOT of smoking. I found the night before that if I didn't drink, I felt better so instead I held fast to a cold bottle of water for the majority of the night. The music, once it started, was good, but there were some drunk young girls in the crowd that were kind of over the top. At one point Kermit & his band started singing the theme song from Treme, which the crowd loved. I tried to take a video of it but all you can hear is a Kardashian wannabe in front of me screaming. Also, the only thing you can kind of see is her basically humping the stage. The sober people among the crowd were side eyeing her quite aggressively which made me feel better about thinking her a fool. We ended up leaving the club when Kermit starting singing Biggie Smalls songs (???) since we were there to hear jazz. We walked home down Decatur and crashed once we hit the room.
While I was kind of disappointed with Kermit's concert, I am really glad we got to go to one. In watching Treme those shows look like so much fun, and to be sure, so many people in the crowd were enjoying themselves. I think between my GERD, my anxiety, not being able to breath properly with all the smoke, and not being able to drink, I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. But yeah, that man can blow.
