Convertible Tour

It's a beautiful Sunday, and we're sipping coffee from perfectly engineered mugs we acquired from a local coffee shoppe on Magazine Street - Rue de la Course - you would love the place with its high ceilings, background classical music, free wifi crowd, gargoyle appointed menu chalk boards and laid back staff...

We drove down in the Miata, which paid for itself yesterday - a SCREAMER weather wise - cool breeze, perfect sunshine, you know the type...we just drove all over town starting out with a visit to the Bywater Art Market Bywarter Art Market which is in the heart of a part of town largely characterized as an artists' colony and talked to some local artists, notably Phillip C. Thompson who does luminous cityscapes and seascapes as well as luxuriously rich still lifes of ordinary objects like paper bags...

A Walk to the French Quarter

We walked halfway to the French Quarter down live oak shaded St. Charles Avenue last Monday around lunchtime, snagged a sandwich at a local po-boy (sub) shop, then hopped the classic street car the rest of the way. We walked past and into the beautiful antique shops of Royal St., and looked for great restaurants we'd like to come back to some night, like Susan Spicer's critically acclaimed Bayona tucked away on Rue Dauphine.

We were initially hampered from crossing Canal St. by a cadre of security personnel clad in black due to the filming of action movie 12 Rounds, which is not an unusual as there are currently five movies in production in town including one with Salma Hayek and another one with Forrest Whitaker...and upcoming in June a Jim Carrey movie with Ewan McGregor.

Shopping for a home in NOLA seems complex right now...for those areas most affected by Katrina, there are entire neighborhoods with very few occupants, and yet many of the others seem to be well into the process of repopulating...the parts of town that were less affected have recovered almost completely and, strangely enough, seem to be in better repair than we previously recall. It's as if the rebuilding seems to actually be improving the city to a large degree, and we have come to the conclusion that rumors of NOLA's cataclysmic demise are fading...