Day 3 in New Orleans started very similar to day 2…hungover. It took everything my boyfriend and I had to roll out of bed for breakfast at B & B Monrose Row. We drank as much coffee as possible and still decided to go back to bed until around 1 pm. It was a little rainy which is the perfect weather for an after breakfast nap.
Once we finally were able to get up we were hungry AGAIN, so we grabbed an umbrella from our fabulous host Cindy and went out for the day. We took a lovely stroll through the French Quarter all the way down to Decatur St. where we stopped at the Original French Market Restaurant that has been open since 1803. We were greeted by the most animated waiter who raved about his food and told us he had the best oysters in the city. We took him up on his offer and started with the garlic and herb char-grilled oysters. They were so delicious…like a must-get! I am salivating just thinking about it. Those and some alligator sausage and we were stuffed.
Gator Sausage
But not that stuffed… After lunch was the moment I had been waiting for since we arrived in the Crescent City. We were walking up to the world famous Café Du Monde which is French for “café of the world”. I could smell the sugary dough blocks from the tiny little café and couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into one of their warm beignets. I was astonished at how large the café is for only serving two items on their menu, chicory coffee and beignets (you can also get regular coffee). Somehow my boyfriend and I showed some sort of self-control because we only ordered one order to share and two chicory coffees. ONE ORDER!! That may be the biggest regret of my life this far. Each bite was so delicious it took everything inside of me to not just lose it and order like ten more.
Earlier that day (like that 30 min span we were awake for breakfast) our host Cindy was telling us about how after Hurricane Katrina, the French Quarter was dead. There was no running water and definitely no tourists. It had been like that for a few months, until one day the most wonderful smell was filling the streets. Every single shop and restaurant owner took a minute to follow their noses and were filled with such joy because that sugary smell meant Café Du Monde was up and running after being shut down for two months. To the residents of New Orleans, the reopening of Café Du Monde meant that New Orleans would be able to recover after Hurricane Katrina. That particularly sweet day, Café Du Monde served up free powdered sugar beignets and warm chicory coffee for free for all of the people of their beloved city. I think that’s a prime example of the sense of community I felt while I was in New Orleans.
It took a while to move after our sugar coma, but we eventually decided to take a New Orleans Scandals tour with the Haunted History Tours company. The tour began with drink vouchers for ½ off hurricanes, so we were pretty positive that we had made a great choice to kick off our evening. The tour ended up being my boyfriend, myself, and two 50-yr-old wild women from Indiana who were away from their husbands for the weekend. They provided non-stop entertainment starting with jello-shots and ending in marriage advice. To top it all off, one of the women’s legal names was Shadow. They wanted to meet up with us later, but I am pretty sure they passed out on the walk back to their hotel.
The tour was interesting (and entertaining) but we got the real history lesson at this tiny little absinthe bar called the Absinthe House that is hidden right off of Bourbon Street in a dark alley way. The bar has been around for almost 200 years and is situated in a building that bears the name of Jean Lafitte. It is rumored that the pirate Jean Lafitte and Andrew Jackson met there and planned the victory of the battle of New Orleans. The Absinthe House also happened to be the after work hang out for many of the local tour guides. My boyfriend and I had the hot seat as different tour guides came and went and we picked their brains for as much juicy New Orleans history as we could get. We learned all kinds of interesting things such as the first settlers of the region were all male convicts from France. It seems there is a good possibility that most of the initial settlers were eaten by a near-by tribe of cannibals called the Atakapa, being lured out into the marsh by females of the tribe for “dinner”. Needless to say, France had to send more convicts and this time they added in mentally insane woman and prostitutes.
In a land filled with misfits, the first two buildings built were a gambling house and a brothel. New Orleans was full of brothels and sometime in the late 1800’s a new music form called “Ragtime” started to become popular. According to our drunken history buffs, Ragtime began in the brothels of New Orleans. As many of us ladies know, living with other women often causes our menstrual cycles to become synchronized. It turns out it’s been that way for 100’s of years. When the prostitutes were “on the rag”, they couldn’t work for a few days. In order to compensate during “rag time” the madam of the house would urge the musicians to play more vigorously in hopes of inducing customers to stay around dancing and spending money. This energetic jazz music was appropriately named “Ragtime”.
History is so cool. If my high school history teacher was as interesting as these bar patrons, I maybe wouldn’t have cheated my way through class!!
The last bit of history I have to share is about the lore of the green fairy and absinthe itself. Many of you have probably read about how absinthe was a muse to bohemians or that it makes people mad and hallucinate. It is also rumored to have drove Van Gogh to cut off his ear. Sadly many of these stories just aren’t true. According to the lovely lady behind the bar dressed in an outfit from the late 1800’s, cloudy green absinthe started out as a medicinal drink and that’s why it tastes terrible. The wormwood was put in it because many people at that time literally had worms, and the wormwood was meant to rid you of that problem. The hallucination rumors may have started because some “free thinkers” may have dripped liquid opium on the sugar cube while waiting for it to dissolve into the green abyss.
Though the colorful rumors of absinthe are a lot more fun, more realistically the wine industry of France was probably responsible for demonizing the spirit. In the middle of the 1800’s, the French wine industry worried that cheap absinthe was eating into the market and used its political clout to get the liquor banned. Good new for us, absinthe is no longer illegal in the United States !!! Whether you are chasing the green fairy or not, I suggest you try absinthe not only for the unique taste but because the traditional method of serving absinthe is a ritual and very beautiful.
Absinthe is served in a beautiful Pontarlier glass which has a well at the bottom indicating how much absinthe to pour. An ornate, slotted spoon is then laid across the glass, with a sugar cube. The final step is to drip ice cold water, possibly using an absinthe fountain, into the glass until the liquid turns cloudy.
I hope that this particular blog has given you really great history tidbits to share at a party or at least inspired you to have a drink! Bottoms Up!
Photo By Eric Litton