Living The Life In The Big Easy, or
Staying Drunk On Bourbon Street (Continued)

This was a quick visit, three days was all we had to explore the town so we limited our days and nights to the immediate area, mostly. And since I was with my friend Dave, we also limited our days to nights mostly. Which is natural when you’ve spent the entire night bar hopping.

Of course in New Orleans you don’t actually have to hop to bars to get drunk. They have walk up windows spaced along Bourbon street, and take away drinks are the norm instead of the exception. I doubt we missed any of the bars anyway (well, we passed on the gay places) and as usual when visiting a new town, Dave came ready with a list of drinking establishments we had to visit. Laffite’s was cool. Small, dark dingy, and historic. Reminded me much of the Jack London Bar in Oakland, CA except the bar wasn’t quite as slanted. Others by name? Right, like I could remember after that much booze . . . though I do remember that shooting pool at most was a challenge as none had a full set of balls. Yeah, you try and keep straight which of the two 3 balls on the table is a stripe or solid after your sixth scotch of the night.

So the highlight of this trip (unless I forgot the real highlight in a drunken daze) was dinner at Emeril’s. Yep, the guy on TV. His original restaurant is in The Big Easy. The place is in a not so good part of town (not that it seems there are any good parts of town when it comes to New Orleans) and the cabbie advised us to be careful after dark. Well, we’d just come from Chicago and visited Buddy Guy’s place where the cabbie didn’t even want to let us out of the cab, so this guy’s warning fell on deaf ears. We planned on being back in the French Quarter before dark in any case.

Early dinner, short wait for a table, and one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Limiting that to just New Orleans is a feat in itself as we had several fantastic meals, crayfish aside (the elderly lady at the table next to use at lunch who suffered a heart attack made for a memorable meal too, but that’s a different tale). Now there probably are many more local influenced dishes served up at Emeril’s, but with a night of partying ahead, I wanted a steak. And it was absolutely heaven. The nice waiter guy even told me afterward how it was prepared. Now pay attention ‘cuz this is easy and oh so ono! Pan fry the steak. Then swirl some worchestershire sauce in the drippings, add crumbled blue cheese until it melts then pour the mix over the steak. That’s it. Great meal and I’ve duplicated it many times since for friends and they all rave. Mmmmmm, hope sharing his secret doesn’t put Emeril out of business!

On The Trail Of The Shadow of The Serpent, or
On The Road To Ruins In QuintRoo

Oh sure, mention Cancun, and you probably think I’m gonna tell you about the hours I spent getting hammered at Carlos and Charlies or Senor Frog’s. Well, I did. But that’s not this tale. And Cancun was just the starting point for this trip as it is for this story.

I’d been to Cancun several times, yep, party town and beautiful turquoise waters . . . who could ask for anything more? (OK, so you can't get stoned there legally like in Amsterdamn, but why quibble over the little things?)But this time around I was off to see Mayan ruins. Tulum, where I’d visited decades ago with a group of friends, deserved a revisit. And I’d always wanted to see Chichén Itzá. But you can do that at any old time. Better, visit during the spring or autumn equinox to see the shadow of the serpent travel down the face of the ruins. But as I said, this tales begins in Cancun.

I travel alone a lot. Not because I don’t have any friends, but rather I make so many more in distant lands that way. For some reason being single and a touri makes others reach out to you (probably out of pity, but who cares?) I’ve met some great folk this way, had fantastic times, and if you get tired of them you can ditch ‘em unlike your abilities to do so if your travelling with them in the first place.

So, I met Mike and Rita at a bar in Cancun (you knew that was coming, huh?) Great couple on holiday from London. Having been to England a few times, I had stories to swap while we got plastered on margaritas debating the relative merits of the Mexican Cantina versus the English pub. Mike was pushing 60 and his lovely wife had to be up there too, but they acted like 20 year olds and were out to have a grand time. We had dinner that night and spent hours at the beach the next day huddled under thatched umbrellas knocking back cervasas . I mentioned my plan to see Chichén Itzá for the equinox, and they too were intending on being there.

But, I’d hired a car and driver and they already had booked seats on a tour bus. Ah well, hours on a long drive might not have been all that fun with them anyway, but we agreed to hook up once there. Long drive, over three hours, and a long siesta for me. And then my arrival at the ruins. Guess I wasn’t the only fan of the event as there were another 40,000 touri there by the end of the day. Finding Mike and Rita was a colossal chore, and after about a half an hour I gave up figuring if fate meant us to see the event together . . .

My driver / guide for the day, Angel, had suggested an early start, and with good reason. Top viewing seats were filling up quickly even though we were almost 5 hours away from showtime. Angel held our seats while I went exploring for a while and had secured umbrellas for shade and beer to quench our thirst by the time I pushed my way through the crowd to get back to him. (Guess who got a major tip!)

Continued . . .

Ramble On . . .

Mosey On Back . . .

Entrance To The Rabbit Hole . . .

SIGHTS OF:

New Orleans

Cancun and The Yukatan

Amsterdam