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 delicio...

New Year's Eve morning brought a very different view of Milford Sound.  Veiled and laced by floating mist that grew first into delicate and then weighty clouds, the Sound was eerie, and we felt like voyagers into the unknown.  The entire Sound was changed: its beauty heavy and forbidding, its light muffled, the cliffs seeming to smoke from an unfelt heat.  It was reminding us that our welcome here could be withdrawn.  Simply stunning.     On our coach tour, we had learned that Ridley Scott had recently finished filming the new Aliens movie in Milford Sound and that Peter Jackson had filmed part of his King Kong remake here as well.  We listened for screeching or drums, for prehistoric creatures that could suddenly leap out of the fog, but in the end, we believed ourselves safe and in danger only of not yet drinking enough coffee. The rain brought out the waterfalls.  All around they appeared, rushing from unsee...