There are a lot of places I dream of going, and a lot I’d love to go back to- I’d say on my bucket list currently it’s Austin, Texas + Savannah, Georgia + Nashville, Tennessee. Some would be surprised to know I’ve never been up north - the farthest I have made it is DC and a layover in Philly. Take me to Maine to watch them fish lobsters out of the port any day! Let me walk the beach on Rhode Island. Plop me in the middle of Time Square- okay maybe not Time Square per say, maybe a cool underground thrift / vintage shop in Chelsy or Soho sounds more like me. A speak easy recently attended by Leo DiCaprio would also do the trick. I’d also be cool with going out west to see Cali and Portland.
But I’d say the one I’ve found myself day dreaming about recently is New Orleans. And here’s a long list of reasons why. Firstly, all growing up my Gma used to talk about how much she loved visiting. I also believe she lived there for a stint as a child. She has also taken cooking lessons there since being married to my Grandad. The smell of gumbo fills her house when the weather starts to chill. She keeps a Cafè du Monde mug in her cupboard that I gravitate towards for after lunch coffee with dessert. I imagine a time when she sat at that coffeeshop sipping coffee and eating beignets and getting powdered sugar all over her in a very endearing way. I know you can picture it too.
The closest I’ve come to this was a N’Orleans style restaurant in Hillsborough. We went on a Saturday roadtrip date once and shared a French press and had beignets. That was just the taste I needed to wet my appetite for being truly, physically, tangibly there. I can picture the liveliness of the streets filling with musicians and dancers, and people who aren’t even dancers or musicians singing and dancing along because it’s infectious! I want to see the architecture that’s still left standing from Katrina. I want to see the Deco buildings and see the fashion and eat the food and drink the drinks. I want to take a boat cruise! But mostly, I want to sit at that café, following in her footsteps and have coffee and eat messy, fluffy doughy clouds of sugar and sketch strangers who walk by. That sounds really nice right about now.
