New Orleans – Dead People and Dead Cars: St. Bernard State Park, LA 6/4/08

We had a really late night last night hanging out in New Orleans, so we took it a bit easy this morning just hanging around the campsite until noonish. When we finally headed into the city, we decided to have lunch at Jacques-Imo’s, famous for it’s fried chicken and cornbread. (Thanks Alan for that tip). It’s located a little out of the way, but on a really charming, funky street. When we got there we discovered that it was open only for dinner, so we walked around and ate a little neighborhood café. Afterwards, while still strolling around we came upon a gelato pazzo. Not one to pass up ice cream, we headed in amongst all this commotion. Turns out the owner was having a portable ice cream freezer delivered, but it was delivered upside down on a pallet. She was very much “atwitter” and stressing way too much. Ned scoped out the situation and figured out a way to fix it. Kinda funny, Mr. Handyman can’t even go on vacation! (No, she did not offer to give us a free gelato, but we decided it was good karma anyway). We then headed over to the Garden District, unloaded our bikes, and rode up and down the streets checking out the grand old homes. We both commented that the neighborhood reminded us very much of Alameda, especially the Gold Coast area. Seriously, the architecture and trees were just like our ol’ digs. The best part of the ride was checking out the cemetery and exploring all the really old crypts. Most of them were completely dilapidated, but beautiful nonetheless under all the old magnolia trees. We then headed back to the French Quarter, I ran into a local post office to drop off some postcards and when we went to restart the winniemobile – nada, nothing, zilch. We used our deep cycle battery to jump start the car and were able to go on our merry way. Ned thought it best to have it checked out, since we were in a major city and not stuck in the middle of nowhere. We found a Midas dealer down the street and turns out the alternator needs to be replaced. The bad news is that we can’t get the part until tomorrow noonish, but good news is that we are stuck in New Orleans (it could have been El Paso!!!) So, tomorrow we’ll hop on our bikes and do some more exploring while the car gets fixed and then decide to either make a late night run for Jackson, MS or hang out for another night. We headed back to Jacques-Imo’s for that much awaited fried chicken dinner. It was tres magnifique!