Vacation routines

Steve and Tessa, our tour guide and operator, left yesterday for an early flight back to Boston. On their way into NOLA they had gotten here so much faster than we on their direct flight. We figured they’d be home before we had finished our brunch. Not so. They had an extra day in the city waiting for their plane’s malfunction to be fixed. They didn’t get home until after midnight.  On their outbound flight they had simply been lucky. We texted them that it was better to be on the ground wishing  that one was in the air than being in the air wishing one was on the ground. We are glad the malfunction got fixed and that they made it home safely.

Tessa had sometimes chided us for walking into a restaurant without checking things out on Yelp or Tripadvisor. This is a Millennial habit I am trying to learn. I don’t dare any longer to just walk into a place simply on the merits of its looks. She has trained me well.

While Tessa and Steve hang out with another couple from NH trying to get home, we enjoyed our very first glorious day in NOLA. It started ominously with rain and thunderstorms. I thought the weather in eastern MA was fickle but this is nothing less. One of our Lyft drivers said that you can get four seasons in a day. We have experienced bone chilling cold winds, rains like monsoons, dense fog, and finally blue skies and temperatures in the 70s.

We have developed a pleasant vacation rhythm: we sleep in, followed by half an hour on one machine or another in the hotel’s fancy fitness room. We shower and dress slowly, recovering at a leisurely pace from exercise, and then decide to walk or ride to a restaurant that Tessa has, or would have approved of. We order Bloody Marys, local fare that usually contains at least one of these ingredients: shrimp, biscuits and gravy, grits, eggs, sausage, which explains the necessity of daily exercise.  After brunch we visit a nearby coffee shop where we check on the weather, the fate of our taxes and other news on our cellphones. And yes, we have become one of those couples who are sitting across from each other looking at their phones.  We spent what is left of the afternoon walking to something we haven’t seen yet or plan the next meal, or both.

 

The day is completed with a music-enhanced dinner in another one of Tessa-approved places, and then a jazz club if we can. We tumble in bed after midnight; all this repeated daily!