The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France on Jackson Square

Given the chance, why wouldn't you celebrate Palm Sunday at Mass in The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France? (These pictures are right before mass...wouldn't be right to take photos during mass.)Three of us came here while the rest found a parking spot and enjoyed Jackson Square before meeting back together again at brunch.

Dinner at Delmonico

Dinner our first night was at Emeril's Delmonico. Yes...it's *that* Emeril and it's *that* Delmonico.

Emeril says hello with fresh flowers.

"Located on the famed St. Charles Avenue streetcar line, Delmonico, the legendary, century-old institution, is an icon in the restaurant industry and has been a cornerstone of traditional Creole dining since 1895. Reopened by Emeril Lagasse in 1998 after an extensive historic renovation, Delmonico continues today serving a modern style of Louisiana's Creole cuisine with Emeril's warm style of service in a grand setting." Here's the tiled mosaic entry floor welcoming us to the historic building.

Four Diamonds says it all.

 

Mary D, daughter of Cathy and GS to all of us, happened to be in town (all the way from San Diego) at a conference, so she was able to join us. Does that make her a chrysalis?

I ordered the grilled lamb loin with braised collard greens, glazed yams, preserved watermelon, pecans, and mango pickapeppa.

It was so delicious. I cleaned my plate. And check out the signature on the steak knife.

Can you be in New Orleans and not order Bananas Foster?

...a little flambé...

Bananas Foster for two,...

...or in our case, eight.

Our dining area was on the second floor. I didn't notice the chandelier going up the stairs, but you can't help but notice it on the way down.

Spring Break 2015

It couldn't have arrived soon enough. I am so looking forward to this spring break...partly because I really need the break, but mostly because I will be with the Butterfly Friends!

I left Farmington at 2:30am, arrived in Portland by 4:30 in time for Concord's bus station to open, caught the 5:00am bus from Portland to Logan Airport in Boston to catch an 8:40 am flight to Nashville, changed planes in Nashville, and arrived in New Orleans by 2pm Central Time (which is 3pm Eastern Time). I've been "traveling" for 12+ hours to get to NOLA. So worth it.

 Southwest loves to celebrate holidays. Could this be their April Fool's Day prank or are they really going to be in a different terminal when I arrive back on April 1? That'll be weird to go out from Terminal E and come back in Terminal A. I'm just glad they warned me.

 This is not the best photograph, but there is snow falling from the sky onto the tarmac at Logan as I look at out at my plane. Snow. There is no snow in New Orleans, though, and that plane is going to get me out of here. :-)

It's just a pretend Grand Ole Oprey but then it's only pretend that I'm in Nashville. The airport doesn't count. But I really was here!

An afternoon stroll through the Big Easy

We are staying in the Garden District. Right after we checked in to our hotel (Quality Inn and Suites Maison St. Charles), we took an afternoon stroll.

Oh the things in NOLA that you don't see anywhere else. Which parade? Any parade. And they have a LOT of parades here.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, so it's been less than 40 days since Mardi Gras. Beads are everywhere (well, they typically are year round, but especially this close to Mardi Gras). Trees look like Christmas trees adorned with the beads. This is "concertina wire" (barbed wire in a coil shape to create an obstacle) on top of a gate that is covered in beads.

We discovered a wonderful local supermarket called Rouses. It's a little like Central Market in Dallas in the variety and quality of offerings (bakery, deli, groceries, beer, wine,...) but it's very local. Here the woman giving out free samples is offering cocktails made with blueberry vodka and lemonaid.

Having chandeliers in Rouses says it all.

Gotta ride the St. Charles trolley! We tried to catch the trolley in front of our hotel, but the first one that came by was full so it didn't stop and after waiting 20 minutes, we just went walking. But we caught it outside of Rouses and rode it into town to Canal Street and then back down St. Charles to our hotel.

We are missing Karen D on the trolley ride but she'll be with us later today. Thinking of you Brenda​, Helen, and Julie (the 3 Butterfly Friends that couldn't make it on this trip)!

A Side Adventure (1/15/2015)

How can there be more adventure when the Yellowstone trip ended Sunday and I got home Tuesday night? I've been to work two days already! Well, this blog entry isn't about my adventure, it's about my suitcase's adventure.

When I arrived in Boston Tuesday night, one of my bags was on the carousel, but not the other--not the black bag, which I borrowed from my mom to bring home all the good stuff I purchased while in Albuquerque. I found a very nice Southwest baggage claim staff member and she filled out the paperwork to initiate the search and promised to call to keep me posted. At noon, I had a message from her saying it hadn't arrived yet but they were continuing to watch for it. Then Kristin, our great administrative assistant, got a call from Logan Lost and Found. They had my suitcase. It had been found at the car rental terminal. What?! I didn't go anywhere near the car rental terminal. No one quite knows how it got there. We have to assume that someone accidentally picked up this bag thinking it was their own and then figured out it wasn't theirs. But why did they ditch it at car return? If they were coming back to Southwest to pick up their bag, why didn't they just bring my bag back at the same time? The baggage claim people and I could not imagine any other scenarios.

In my Tuesday night conversation at Southwest, they said they would FedEx my bag to me in Farmington when they did get it. But now it's obvious this isn't Southwest's issue. They got my bag to Boston, I just didn't get it off the carousel before someone else did. The Lost and Found person explains how they can get my bag to UPS for me. It will cost $20 plus packaging and shipping. I decide to call Southwest to let them know they're off the hook, but also to ask them how much it would cost to use their FedEx service. No way, they say. It's still their responsibility and they will pay to get my suitcase to me. Even though it's clearly not their fault, they're going to get my suitcase to me! The agent calls Lost and Found then calls me back. The FedEx guy has already come for his last run of the day, but she convinced him to come back and get my suitcase, so she personally ran over to lost and found to pick it up and get it to the FedEx guy.

By the time I finished, I had worked with three different Southwest agents and two Logan Lost and Found agents. All of them were kind, generous, understanding, knowledgable, and easy to talk to. And then there's the Fed Ex guy. Heaven only knows how many different folks my adventuresome little suitcase had encounters with. Hopefully there was only the one scummy person who didn't take responsibility for his/her actions and that all the other people it encountered were as awesome as the folks I encountered.

And tonight when I got home from work, look who was waiting for me at my front door.

I LUV SOUTHWEST AIRLINES!!

"The End" of The Yellowstone Adventure (1/13-14/2015)

This blog entry is about one of my travels, so it goes in my travel blog. But it *ends* up in Maine with an adventure that could only happen in Maine and so it belongs in my Life with the Mainiacs blog, too. It's a double entry.

I had 36 hours in Denver and then it was time to pack it all back up and head out again. I acquired a lot of goodies in Albuquerque, so I borrowed a suitcase from my mom. I was able to stuff my purse into my usual carryon, so now I can check two (the black bag and the big orange bag) and take two on board... a carryon bag (the smaller orange bag) and a personal item (the orange striped bag. With enough wheels and straps and creativity and agility, I can actually make my way into the airport without any assistance. What a traveler!

On Dec. 18, when I left, I drove to Boston and Rodney and I did an amazing car swap. I picked him up at Logan's terminal C and he dropped me off at terminal E. Then he had the use of my car for the 9 days he was in town and parked my car at the Portland Transportation Center on Dec. 27. It saved me paying 9 days of parking and he got the use of a car. Pretty cush deal. This is the photo he sent me to show me where my car was parked.

This is what it looked like on Jan. 13 when I arrived in Portland. Can you tell that the holiday travel crunch is over? Can you tell that they had some snow after Rodney left and before I got back?

Check out the snow and ice on my car. Actually, if you're going to have ice on your car, this is what you hope for... a layer of soft fluffy snow first, then a layer of ice. I got the bonus of more fluffy snow on top of that. It made it sooo easy to get the ice off. It was like a reverse oreo...two layers of soft icing with a hard cookie on the inside. I was actually able to lift the ice off in sheet and just toss them on the ground. The top layer of snow went with the ice and didn't add any weight. A simple brush took off the rest. It took some time and in 7 degree weather, it was a little chilly, but all in all, it wasn't bad at all. Except for the part where my doors were frozen shut. I couldn't get into my car! It doesn't matter how clear the outside of your car is if you can't get in.

 

In desperation, I tried the trunk. Well, that opened. Uh oh. Was that really my only choice of solution? Hmmmm. I looked online using my phone to see if I could google any other ideas. There really weren't any good ones I hadn't tried except the one with the blow dryer and the one with boiling water, neither of which I had access to. I could call AAA, but I really didn't feel like waiting 30 minutes or more in the cold in the lonely parking lot. So I plucked up my courage, fought off a few thoughts of claustrophobia, and crawled in. I released the two back seat releases, pushed the seats down, and wiggled and crawled my way into the car where I was able to open the doors from the inside. I was so tempted to take a selfie, but it physically wasn't possible. So we will just have to use our imaginations. Does the picture that popped into your imagination make you laugh? I was laughing the whole time. Fortunately, my car started right up and after the very nice bus station employee let me back into the building to use the facilities and to pay the $4 rate instead of the $6 rate at the exit, I was on my way home. It was actually January 14 by the time I got home. Today was a very long day.

Somehow this was a fitting "End" to this crazy trip. Though I didn't get a selfie of "the end," I did notice a security camera in the parking lot. Let me know if you see my adventure on YouTube.

Last Day (1/11/2015)

Even with an extra day added, our time in Yellowstone was too short. Our last day arrived. We are scheduled for an 8:30 departure on one of the bombardiers. Sunrise isn't until 8:00 so it was dark when we checked out of our cabin and made our way to the main lodge. They provide little sleds for guests to use to get their luggage back and forth. They work quite well! We had two orange ones the first day. But this morning, I got one of the cool tie-dyed looking sleds. I'm sure it worked better because of the great colors. That funny haze is the reflection of my flash on the steamy fog coming off the snow. It's really cold this morning.

 After breakfast we boarded our bomb and headed out. There are only two stops on the way back to Flagg Ranch. And it's downhill, so this trip is much shorter than the trip from Flagg to Snow Lodge. We stopped at Kepler Cascades. It was fun to see it in daylight after listening to it in the dark the first night. I'm not sure what the warning sign is trying to warn me of, but it's a great icon.

We had intermittent sunshine and clouds on the way out. Are those the Tetons?

 Yellowstone and The Grand Teton National Park are practically intertwined. Instead of going through Jackson, we cut off an hour of drive time by heading east at Moran Junction.

from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Grand_Teton_National_Park.jpg, in the public domain

Somehow, we managed to go in and out of the Tetons and back in again. It was the only sign we saw of the Tetons, so to us, we were leaving the Tetons and here's a sign to prove it...sorta.

Wyoming is a B I G state. And most of it is remote and wide open. We drove for over two hours with no cell service. Fortunately, there were enough AM radio stations carrying the Broncos game that we were able to keep up with the news. After about 7 hours of driving, we ended up in a bad snow storm and still had another 2 hours to go. It was a very long day. But we made it safely to our destination in Denver.

Happy Birthday, Karen! Look what birthday adventures you would've had had you come with us.