Vacation Redux

We’re back from our road trip and happy to be reunited with our crazy dogs and quiet house. In truth, the Florida part of the trip was a partial fail. The beaches are beautiful, but crowded. I forgot how sand gets in everything! I think I’m more of a hammock girl. While we encountered some really nice people in Destin, there’s a weird vibe with a lot of the women. Kind of a high school ranking system kind of feel. Very very odd. It’s also very conservative. We got a little tired of being assaulted by Fox News, which always seemed to be playing in the hotel when we were having breakfast. Hi, would you like some Obama bashing with your eggs? Dude, they even do that crap on the morning shows on Fox. Fox News is about as unbiased as a Michael Moore movie.

All that aside, we did get to relax and spend time together. We watched about 20 hours of HGTV. We also got together with an old friend, which was really nice. But we both wished we’d spent less nights in Florida and more in New Orleans.

I just love New Orleans. Yes, there are some signs of economic recovery there, but there are a lot of signs that the city is struggling as well. Hotels are cheap! You can stay in almost any hotel in town for about $150 per night or less. Some of my favorite restaurants had closed, but the old standbys are still there, and there are some great new places as well. Check out my reviews on Yelp if you want to read about what and where we ate.

We also took the Honey Island Swamp Tour. I took it about ten years ago and loved it. The focus was very much on the ecology of the swamp, and we explored a lot of bayous and saw some cool stuff. This time it was pretty different. The tour guide (different guy) stayed mainly on the river, which kind of sucked for certain kinds of photo op. However, he was very popular with the alligators, and we got to see a couple of them very close up. One of the bonuses of the trip is the drive to Slidell. The guy who drives the van gives you a ton of interesting information on the trip there and back about New Orleans history, architecture, Katrina, and much more. It’s a really good tour.

I did a fair amount of photography in the French Quarter, and learned some lessons about how to shoot architecture: either straight on, or at a significant angle. Duh. So not all my shots came out that great, but since we took about 350, there are still a few good ones in the lot. As always, check my flickr page for the full set, a few excerpts below and in the coming weeks.