Quiet Please

Okay, I’m back from a week of serious fun in New Orleans. I’d like to say that my character has improved, but let’s not start expecting miracles.
Starting this week, I’ll be telling the story in a series of articles designed to highlight the Crescent City as a good place to take your family for a vacation. That’s right, your family. Unfortunately, most people only associate New Orleans with Bourbon Street, strippers and alcohol, but there’s a lot more than that going on.
But I’ll leave the good stuff for the series. There are a few things I’d like to discuss that are more fit for this space. First of all, as Mark Twain once observed, “The food in New Orleans is as delicious as some of the less criminal forms of sin.” I’d be hard put to come up with a more descriptive quote for the culinary possibilities in the Big Easy. It’s hard to find a restaurant that isn’t really good, but we did locate one. By accident.
The name of the place is the Red Fish Grill, and I should mention that the seafood was quite good. But there are more elements to a dining experience than just the food. Things like the surroundings and the atmosphere.
The Red Fish Grill was, by far, the loudest restaurant I’ve ever been in that didn’t have either a live band or a bar fight in progress. My dear wife and I found it impossible to have a conversation across the table without shouting, and yelling during dinner is not conducive to good digestion.
I’m not sure why it was so loud in there. Maybe everybody else was just having too much fun, or maybe we got there too late to get in on the free booze during happy hour. Whatever it was, I don’t think I’ll be going back there again. There are too many good seafood restaurants in New Orleans that aren’t a hazard to your auditory nerves.
Another small matter, New Orleans has a considerable problem with feathered rats. You may see them as pigeons, but to me they are just vermin with wings. Many of the venues in the French Quarter are open air, with windows open to the street. The pigeons have long ago lost their aversion to coming indoors, and it is somewhat disconcerting to have a feathered rat dive bomb your head while your trying to enjoy a cafe au lait and a bignet.
One more thing: New Orleans is rampant with body snatchers. We’re not talking about white slavery here, but rather people whose job it is to entice tourists to take a tour of condominium time share outfits by offering good sounding offers like free hotel stays or tickets to local attractions. If you visit New Orleans and are approached on the street by some fast talking joker who claims to work for the tourism bureau or some other legitimate sounding enterprise, don’t hesitate, don’t blink, just run. I say run because just walking away won’t cut it. These clowns will follow you for blocks if you try to be polite.
I eventually had to resort to my more base instincts and tell them to “Flee before me, or taste my wrath.” This seemed to work but I suspect only because nothing in their training had prepared these hucksters for a pro-active response.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I’d have done if they’d persisted after that. Maybe crying would have worked.