We Take Ourselves With Us

On our last day together before I went full-on board meeting, we started with breakfast at our hotel restaurant, Cafe Adelaide.  The vibe was perfect--plush grey-blue velvet banquettes, huge Warhol-tinted portraits of Adelaide, mid-century modern accessories.  The service was average and the food--outside of the stand-out beignets and chickory coffee--was so, so.  But, it was convenient. The view from our window, one last time before we switched hotels.  Overall, I'd give the Loews a solid B+. We then packed our bags and hiked up Poydras to the conference hotel--the massive Hilton Riverside, where I do believe every single NOLA conference is required, by law, to set up shop.  After checking in, we elected to wander in the direction of the World War II Museum. In practice, this meant that we somehow walked in a perfect square and wound up about two blocks from our hotel at an amazing Mexican restaurant, El Gato Negro .  The food was delicious--super fresh and perfe

Day two in New Orleans, we had (mis)identified another GF breakfast joint, one closer to our hotel, which turned out not to offer all its website promised.  So, we punted and quickly found another place off Jackson Square and started getting our steps in. One of the most lovely parts of New Orleans buildings, in my eyes, were the painted signs of yesteryear whose faded glory shone through like ghosts of a past long forgotten.  Imagine a world in which one would go to a busy city center to find "raw furs." The green on these doors is everything. Building patina like no other and a city reflected in shades. Four for the road to Chartres. This small pharmacy museum was like something out of Harry Potter: a window of magical potions at the ready. What struck me about this sign was that the Loyola College of Pharmacy gives enough of these plaques to have a template for them.   Lovely reflection of the Quarter in the window of a loom shop--