We
had a major league rainstorm last night and this morning. After we got back to the RV last night a deep
line of large thunderstorms came through the area. There was heavy rain, lots of thunder and
lightning, and even a little bit of hail.
It continued all night virtually without let-up and into the
mid-morning. We thought we might be
subject to some flooding, but the RV Park remained free of any accumulation of
water. The TV weatherman said the area
received over 1½ inches of rain per hour through most of the night, and I can
believe it most likely did.
We
cancelled our morning plans due to the weather and didn’t start out until
almost noon. Our first stop was for
lunch at the Central Grocery, home of the Muffaletta sandwich, consisting
essentially of lunch meat, cheese, and olive spread on a roll. It is a special New Orleans creation and very
good.
After
lunch, we visited the Old Mint, a beautiful old building that started out as an
U.S. Army fort and was later converted to a U.S. Mint that operated until
1909. The building is now run by the
Louisiana State Museum in conjunction with the National Park Service. There is presently an excellent exhibit
celebrating 50 years of operation of Preservation Hall, the traditional jazz
club venue we visited last night. When
the hall was opened in 1962, it became the hub for many of the old time New
Orleans musicians, giving them a central place to gather, teach, and perform
traditional New Orleans jazz. Over the
subsequent years most of the old timers have passed on but their heritage still
lives on. A new generation of musicians is
performing the traditional music with their own interpretations yet maintaining
the essence of a truly American music form.
While
there, we also had the opportunity to listen to a piano player named Jim Hession
play a variety of traditional jazz songs.
The performance was part of an almost daily series of programs dealing
with the history of jazz by the National Park Service’s New Orleans Jazz
National Historic Park. The highlight of
his performance was having people from the audience shout out the names of any
song they wanted him to play. He wrote down the names of the songs as people
called them out. After awhile, he
started playing a continuous medley of portions of each of the songs. It was an amazing performance and very well
done. He called this his “musical gumbo”
portion of the show. We bought one of
the CDs of his work that he had available for sale. Both he and his wife are retired Disney World
performers.
.
After
listening to the performance and visiting the Preservation Hall exhibit, we
went to have a drink at Check Point Charlie’s, a bar/grill/laundromat/game room
near the Old Mint. The place is a
classic “dive” that also features a wide variety of live music 7 days a
week. On our New Orleans Mardi Gras trip in 2009, we were
intrigued by the military name of the place, especially after seeing someone outside
the bar in a hand grenade costume waving to people as they drove by.
We
then decided to take a trolley ride along the waterfront. This trolley line is set up to carry people
between the hotel district, business district, cruise ship terminal and the
French Quarter. We walked back from the
far end of the waterfront area near the cruise ship terminal through a
riverfront shopping mall (Riverwalk) then took the trolley back to the French
Quarter where we started, east of Jackson Square.
We
had some time before our dinner reservation at 7:00 pm so we relaxed awhile in
a restaurant/bar near Jackson Square where the usual mix of street people,
musicians, fortune tellers, tourists, and others who just appeared to be
“hanging around” made for an eclectic mix of urban activity that can almost
always be found in this area of New Orleans.
Dinner
was at The Palm Court, a famous New Orleans jazz club/restaurant that features
traditional New Orleans Jazz. The food
was excellent as was the music. The club
features different local musicians each night usually backed up by house
musicians (The Palm Court Jazz Band). We
stayed through two long sets of music and were back at the RV by 10:00 pm. Even
with a late start today we got a lot done.
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