Weapons, Spoons, and Bannanas

As most of you know, I returned Sunday from a weekend trip to New Orleans. I must say that my first trip to New Orleans was not as I expected it to be. I had been told repeatedly that I would see and hear all sorts of unholy things. And while I am not saying that New Orleans was the cleanest city- there were some stores that seemed quite sketchy and I did see some unusual outfits-I didn’t see but a few things that were inappropriate. And like I’ve told some already, I have had worst things said to me at Walmart (really). That could be for a number of reasons. I could have been overly prepared for the unexpected. It could have been the areas we went in, the timing or the people I was with-especially considering I was the youngest person in our group by a good three years.

Though there were a few things that seemed to through a wrench in our plans, I could not have asked for a better trip. In addition to making some new friends and exploring a new city here are some of the highlights:

The professor we went with is the WWII professor so of course we went to the WWII museum. The exhibits were amazing. If you are ever in the area you should visit. Yet, little did I know that Dr. Tent knew everyone at the museum so we got to go into the archives of the museum to see all the artifacts that weren't on display. Beyond amazing! Who gets to do that! The highlight of the archives is when we got to hold weapons actually used in the war-German, Russian, American, and Japanese. Above is me holding a German gun-it makes me look so small!

The lovely man with the red tie is Dr. Tent. He really liked the band "Steamboat Willy" that played at this open air cafe. He other two gentlemen in the picture are members of the band who apparently invited Dr. Tent to come back and play spoons. For some reason they thought that Dr. Tent was German (he's not) and started talking to him in German (luckily he does speak German.) Dr. Tent came up to our table and told us "just to go with it" and play along that he was from Germany. We called him Mien Tent the rest of the trip.

For brunch Sunday morning we went to Brennan's a very nice resturant-so nice it had a bathroom attendant. We had the better service here than we did anywhere in New Orleans. The waiter came over to tell us to get our cameras out. As I dug through my puse looking for my camera the waiter took my purse away from me and put it on the table, "You don't worry about it," he said, "your comming with me." He took me up to where the strawberries and bannanas were sitting at the end of the table and made me begin preparing the banana's foster.

It was pretty much amazing!