Two Sisters at Two Sisters

Tuesday, October 20th

My stomach was all in a jumble, probably from the flight and the Cajun mushrooms and Hurricane I'd gobbled down the night before. I'd put money on the chorizo in the stuffed mushrooms though, as the stabbing sensation I was experiencing was familiar to me from the last time I'd had something with chorizo so now I had two incidents to link together. So, I had a somewhat temperamental sleep but not totally awful, I just figure I'll need to take it slow on our first full day in New Orleans! I was gonna skip getting breakfast because I wasn't really up for food, but the 9am alarm got me up so I threw on some clothes real quick and wandered down to have a looksie while the stabby pain has somewhat subsided. They serve breakfast tacos? As this Homewood Suites? I didn't get any because I don't eat anything that filling at 9am usually, but certainly not in my delicate condition, but I do grab some orange juice, cranberry juice, a croissant, and two chocolate muffins. 

Back in the room, Jess has Scoobtober on the TV, nice! I relax a little while Jess does some research on the Streetcar and if we'll need a pass for today. We can walk to our brunch reservation at the Court of Two Sisters, so we figure we'll buy the Streetcar pass in person at Walgreens at some point when we need it because no way are we downloading an app, get outta here with that. Jess says we should probably start to get ready, as we only have 20 minutes before we need to be out the door, but I remind her we're an hour behind now and her phone doesn't automatically update so we actually have an hour and 20 minutes, so we're good! We do eventually get ourselves ready in dressed in the day's assigned outfits (I was particular about needing to have an outfit assigned to every day of our trip in advance while we packed) and we're out the door by 11am. 

Jess assured me we were, this time, headed the right way as we were taking a similar path to the one she tried to take us on the night before. She's right this time, and we turn onto St. Charles, which turns into Royal Street after Canal Street, and we're officially walking through the French Quarter! So cool! It's a nice, leisurely, lovely stroll past shops and balconies up to the Court of Two Sisters. We get seated right away, as we have a reservation, and we get a perfect seat right by the fountain in the courtyard! Jazz music playing, the fountain bubbling, the air sweet and just the right temperature. Incredible start to our day! Our server is Jade, she comes by and explains that it's a buffet brunch so we can get up and help ourselves, she'll handle getting us the free soft drinks and coffees and teas, but if we want any alcohol that is an extra charge. Of course we want some alcohol, so we order an Apple Cider Mimosa to split! 

Jess gets up first and gets some fried crawfish, duck a l'orange, chicken jambalaya, and a biscuit. I get up and get a bowl of the cold crawfish pasta and the hot shrimp pasta. We work on those as our mimosa arrives and just have a grand old time eating and drinking and listening to the music! The duck is ok, not really my thing, but the pastas and jambalaya are excellent! The crawfish was surprisingly tasty, we don't usually like fish, but this was good! Next round, I get some turtle soup and shrimp etouffee, both of which we ate with the biscuit and they were very well seasoned, but both not really our thing. Jess got us some andouille gumbo with rice, sausage jambalaya, and redskin mashed potatoes! The latter two were great, the gumbo was just ok to us, but then we're not seafood fans so we know that's an us thing. 

We order some coffee to drink while we have desert of a shared slice of Oreo cake, some cucumbers, and watermelon, just something light and refreshing to finish us off. I think it was such a great idea for us to start our trip off with a brunch buffet so we could try so many things we'd probably never order as a full dish, but still would like to try as it's quintessential New Orleans cuisine! We take a stroll around the courtyard, and both really love the second fountain that's designed like a wishing well, and then we headed out through the back exit, which has a Charm of Happiness for all who pass through it, and back into the French Quarter! 

The back exit lets you out onto Bourbon street as opposed to Royal, so we get a little disoriented looking for the House of Voodoo store, but we're just looking around really so it was fun! We saw a lot of really beautiful balconies and houses and a bar that's designed to look like a tavern and just really enjoyed being lost for a little while. Some rando did, as usual, try and chat with us but we shook him off eventually. People just do that with Jess and I, just talk to us like we're waiting to be entertained, and we're quite adept by now at getting rid of them in a polite but effective way. 

We do, eventually, turn around, get back on track, and find the House of Voodoo store! Lotta cool stuff! But nothing catches either of our eye so we're back out onto the street again to find Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo museum. We do indeed find it and it's $10 each for museum access, which is fine with us so we pay and head in through the little hallway behind the cashier's desk. The museum is, and claims to be, basically some guys personal collection of stuff that he arranged and put on display. I think that's great, think more people need to make these small, Podunk museums with their stuff cause that's were the good stuff is! Everywhere there were totems and idols and at all of them people had left offerings. Mostly money, dollar bills and coins, but also tiny figures, cigarettes, and even hotel room keys! 

There were lots of signs and placards and articles posted about talking about Marie Laveau and some guy reading next to me was like "Wow, she was a devout Catholic? And a voodoo priestess? Imagine that." Sir, tell me you know nothing about voodoo? It's so intertwined with Catholicism, why would it be a surprise that she was Catholic? Be weirder if she wasn't. But I say nothing, because it would be weird and nobody cares, and we continue to explore the rooms and relics and whatnot. There's a painting of a cofounder of the museum on the wall but the placard says she wishes to be anonymous? But she has her whole portrait up. So... Anyway, in the furthest room, Jess does get to see her famed (to her) alligator rougarou which she heard about in her United States of Cryptids book, the reason we know about this little museum at all. Naturally, got some pics of her with him, among other things, and then we check out the gift shop! Once again, many cool and interesting things, but nothing we think we need or want, so we head out empty handed. 

That was everything on our to-do list, so now it's time for a walkabout the French Quarter to explore and get our bearings! We're just looking around when this woman stops us with some bit about how we don't have a drink in our hands and we need to start following the New Orleans rules about having fun in public. It's obviously a sales technique of some kind but she's doing a great job so we play along and she hands us some hats, just baseball caps that say New Orleans or something, and says she works for Meals on Wheels and they're handing out hats. Ok. And then she says they accept donations for them - "$15 is usual, but $20 if folks are feeling generous." We tell her we have $6 in cash, which isn't true, but that's what we said, and we honestly would have given it over if she was being serious about the money being a 'donation'. But of course it's not, she requires $15 or more, cause it's not a donation, it's a cost. So Jess and I say sorry, we don't have that much and hand the hats back, which seems to surprise her greatly! I imagine once the hat is in people's hands they feel obligated to pay for them, but not Jess and I! We liked her little bit at the start and we did offer some chump change as a 'donation' but we're the stones you can't get blood from so we handed em back and said farewell and she seemed so bewildered as we merrily carried on our way!

On that way, we come across something called the Celestine Coffee Bar, which appears to be attached to a bed and breakfast, and it says it's courtyard is where Tennessee Williams did some of his writing! Well, of course he had to check it out, as Jess is a Tennessee Williams fan and I am too, by extent, as an Elizabeth Taylor fan. We go through the doorway and past the interior staircase to a courtyard where someone directs us to follow the barista who's just heading back to the coffee bar area! The barista is SO friendly and nice! Asks us what we've seen, what we're looking to experience in New Orleans, and makes a recommendation that we check out Frenchman Street and the Spotted Cat Bar! Jess orders a cappuccino with a shot of vanilla, and I was thinking about ordering some Orange drink think but the barista tells me they're out of that, but he'll make me the Turmeric Latte with the espresso shot included with no upcharge, so perfect!

We drink our coffees in the courtyard, once again by a fountain, and listen as the sounds of jazz fill the air from the Court of Two Sisters, which is right next to The Celestine and actually shares a courtyard! They're only separated by a wall and gate, so you can see and hear into the other! How cool is that! Another perfect little experience of just relaxing and enjoying ourselves! After having our fill of the area, we get up and moving again to explore our way to Frenchman street! We stop into a few places and get some ideas for purchases, but make none officially. The Gallier House ends up on the way, and the Ursuline Convent, which we'll be visiting the next day, so that was a good find to know where they are! We also find a neat bookstore with a copy of East of Eden with Florence Pugh on the cover that's very tempting but I restraint myself. The bookstore actually has a little cabinet at the front to store your drinks so you don't have to carry them (and potentially spill them) in the store! So smart! 

We walk as far as the History of Jazz museum before we turn around and circle back to the Spotted Cat Bar, now our coffees our finished and we're ready for some booze. We get carded at the front, of course, and end up chit-chatting with the woman at the front for a bit about my hair, which is a common source of discussion from people, and because we're standing by the door and the bouncer is facing us, a group of people line up behind her assuming we're the bouncers and she's waiting to get in aha! She does finally notice the people behind her and we all go into the bar just as the band in the window is beginning their set. We sit at the bar and Jess orders a "cat"-tail called Catnip and I get the non-alcoholic Love Bite just because it sounds neat! Both drinks are great and we sit and listen to the band play a jazzy version of Imagination from Willy Wonka! Guy on the sax is killing it the whole time! Incredible! After using the bathroom and tipping the band, we're back onto the street, popping in and out of shops once again without committing to buying anything. There's live music everywhere we walk, because of course, and we're passed by bike carts and horse drawn carriages and tour buses and we walk by so many potential restaurants but we are, unfortunately, not hungry. 

It's only 6pm-ish so we decide to head to the hotel to do a little resting before we think about dinner. We get back to Canal street and book it across the street, only to remember that I wanted to check out the Tourist Information Center to get a map, only for us to discover after we crossed back over that it's closed. C'est la vie. We check out a little bit of Canal Street, which has two Cafe Beignet's like right next to each other and SO many Walgreens, and then hit St. Charles again to get back to our room. I start getting a little shaky as we're getting to the hotel and remember that I haven't had any water since the buffet in the morning so it was for the best we headed back when we did aha! We chill out of a while, basically collapse after what we would call a very busy day, and casually peruse a map we found in the lobby on the way up. We melt the remote looking for something to put on the TV, eventually landing on Beat Bobby Flay, eat the muffins we hadn't gotten to in the morning and some chocolate apple things we got at ALDI before we left and packed with us and that revives us enough to start really thinking about dinner. 

We decide we're both just not hungry enough to justify a sit-down dinner so we decide on getting curry at a Thai place up the street. Just what one comes to New Orleans for, the Thai food. We order some panang curry and pineapple rice. Jess says it won't be ready until 8:30pm, but her phone is, once again, off kilter with the time, so it's actually ready at 7:30pm lol. We get the message it's ready and make the quick walk down the street, then kinda amble with the food to see what else is in the area. We're almost back to the hotel when I remember we never got beignets, and I wanted new beignets every day. Jess is kinda over that and wants to go to the room, but I convince her and we walk a little ways past our hotel to Walk-Ons where I place and order for their beignet bites! 12 mini beignets! We hang around the building for a while waiting for the order, trying to figure out what's going on in the building across the street that's all closed up but with disco lights coming from the second floor. Interesting. Private party probably. 

Beignets acquired at last, we walk the block back to our hotel room! The room key is kinda persnickety, but we're figuring her out and we do manage to get back into our room to eat! And channel surf, of course, because we're the kind of folks who always like to have the TV on, and we find "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" on, which is perfect! Vampire stuff! After eating and finishing the film I take a shower while Jess tries to find something else on TV to watch but it's kinda slim pickings. I do some writing and keep putting the mini beignets into my mouth even though my stomach has only finally, officially, settled because that's who I am as a person. 11pm comes around, as it does, and that means it's time to hit for us lightweights to hit snooze button and head to bed because lots more fun awaits us in the daylight hours!