New Orleans: Four Days of Beignets & Foul Play(s) in the Big Easy, Pt. 2
Harmony Circle, found in New Orleans’ Warehouse District, was transformed between 2017-2022, when a decades-old statue of Robert E. Lee was removed and artwork by U.S. artist Raúl de Nieves installed in its place atop the column seen here
10:39am, Thursday — “These birds are like deer in Michigan, they’re frickin’ everywhere,” remarks Kenny, warily eyeing a flock of nearby pigeons as we sit down for brunch at the Ruby Slipper.
There they went, walking down the street in a straight line, looking like a high school football team warming up before practice with some high knees. There was Andrew, James, Michael, Patrick, Lucy, Bernadette, and, oh my goodness, don’t look now, but it’s Francis of Assisi himself. That’s right: it was Thursday in New Orleans and the saints were marching in. Or was I just hallucinating?
Our third day began with brunch at a lovely little spot right down the street from The Natchez called the Ruby Slipper, which I have since learned is a chain restaurant with locations in several southern states. I usually like to patronize local restaurants when traveling — such as that time I insisted upon finding “local pizza” in Oklahoma City, only to unwittingly order online from a pie shop inside a gas station (#sad) — but the rest of the fam had eaten at Dorothy Gale’s favorite spot in the city on Tuesday morning before I’d arrived and they loved it so much they wanted to go back for seconds.
Revisiting the Ruby Slipper turned out to be a great decision, as my eggs cochon (a take on your traditional eggs Benedict, featuring apple-braised pork instead of Canadian bacon and a buttermilk biscuit in place of the English muffin) was sublime. Washing it down with a mimosa flight didn’t hurt, either.
11:50am — Feeling sorry for me and my failure to find a Dean Martin-themed slot inside Caesars (because of course we stopped at the casino), a different machine spits $40 at me. You might call it a reverse donation.
After briefly distracting ourselves at the nearby Caesars casino, it was time for the first extracurricular activity of the day: a stop at the Titanic exhibit, because why the hell not. Titanic: An Immersive Voyage bills itself as a “once-in-a-lifetime expedition to experience Titanic”, promising “numerous artifacts, dramatic room recreations, never-before-seen 3D views, video animations, and cutting-edge technology”. So, is it truly mind-blowing, you ask? I don’t know that I would say that, but it was nifty nonetheless.
As seems to be standard, they assign you the identity of a real passenger, whose fate is ultimately revealed toward the end of the experience, at the outset. Along the way, the ship’s ill-fated story is told through museum-like exhibits, some of which allow you to “step into” areas of Titanic, such as the room featuring a recreation of the famous grand staircase. The end of the line, as it were, is an open, cavernous room that invites you to sit in life boat replicas as a 3D video projection plays out all around you.
1:09pm — Jack and Rose, or at least a couple resembling them, dance their way across the screen inside the immersive Titanic exhibit. Do you wanna tell them how this ends, or should I?
For the second year in a row, my assigned Titanic passenger wound up dead. This time it was Antti Wiljam Sihvola, a 21-year-old originally from Finland who was headed to the U.S. with plans to settle in Idaho and work for an old friend of his father’s. Unfortunately for him, the infamous Iceberg, that not-so-little rascal, had other plans. Poor Mr. Sihvola’s body was either never recovered or, if found, never identified. Fun times, right?
2:28pm — We sit down for adult beverages with a couple of strangers at Bourbon Street Drinkery. The woman, whom we’ll call “Jen” (we never got her name), informs us of a concoction called Purple Drank that we surely must try down the road at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop.
Bourbon Street once again called to us in the wake of our immersive Titanic experience (because apparently reliving the horrific deaths of 1,500 people in one of the most famous tragedies in human history works up a real thirst?), so we made our way over there looking to get into some trouble. And that’s precisely what we did, if you consider sitting down with a pair of strangers at a bar sporting reasonably-volumed live music in the middle of the afternoon “trouble”, that is.
While not remotely raucous or rambunctious, our stop at Bourbon Street Drinkery afforded me the opportunity to pop my Sazerac cherry. The Sazerac, as you know, is a classic New Orleans cocktail that pairs rye whiskey and absinthe or Herbsaint (a Prohibition-era absinthe substitute) with Peychaud’s bitters, sugar, and a lemon peel that is a must-try for any whiskey fiend that sets foot in the city. The Sazerac is not exclusive to New Orleans, of course, but if you’re in the city that officially recognizes the concoction as its signature drink, you ought to at least give it a whirl, right?
A couple of duds followed the Drinkery until we ended up all the way down at the other end of Bourbon Street, where sits the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States, so the legends say.
2:55pm — Lafitte’s is alive with the sound of busy beer taps, mild chatter, and occasional uproarious laughter. Despite Jen’s recommendation, I order a Yuengling.
Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, found at the corner of Bourbon and St. Philip streets, is one of the places that was absolutely on my list of things to see and do in New Orleans. The place, which has the feel of an old-time-y pirate bar, dates back to the 1700s. The current owners say the bar was built sometime between 1722 and 1732, though other accounts say the property was built as a house in the 1770s. Either way, it is super old, my dude — one of the oldest surviving structures in the city, in fact.
The place is lively enough during the day, but come nightfall, it transforms from an old-time-y pirate bar into an old-time-y pirate piano bar (the key word here being piano, in case you didn’t catch that). We wouldn’t find this out for ourselves until the next night, when Nicholas and I returned for our final foray on Bourbon Street. In the meantime, on our Thursday afternoon visit, the piano was primarily being used as a table.
Lafitte’s is such a well-known spot that it occasionally draws some famous patrons. Celebrities who have set foot here include Nicolas Cage, Adam Devine, Tennessee Williams (RIP!), Jason and Kylie Kelce, and Jelly Roll, the latter three making an appearance together while in town for Super Bowl LIX just a couple months before us. We did not spy any famous clientele with our little eyes, but it’s possible Kate Moss was there and we just didn’t know it.
Behold, the oldest structure to be used as a bar in the United States
7:58pm — Tour guide John, sporting a Hawaiian shirt and Miami Dolphins baseball cap, which he will later tell us he bought from a homeless man for $5, welcomes us to the French Quarter Ghost and Murder Tour.
Thursday night was prime for a fright or two as we embarked on a ghost tour in the French Quarter, which is apparently a very popular thing to do. Whilst strolling the streets and hearing the gruesome tales connected to various locations, we probably ran into at least seven or eight other tour groups, many of them visiting the same locations that were included on our tour’s docket. Among those locations were the Ursuline Convent, which is linked to an odd episode involving young women who were shipped over from France to help offset the largely male population of New Orleans in the early 18th century (who were then accused of being vampires by the locals); the Louisiana Supreme Court building, where a ghostly lawyer allegedly appears from time to time; and the former home of a rich, charismatic bachelor, Jacques St. Germain, who was also reputed to be a vampire.
The most famous site on our tour, however, was probably…
9:00pm — The LaLaurie Mansion, former home of the murderous Mister and Madame LaLaurie, greets us at the height of the ghost tour. John regales us with the couple’s tales of terror as we keep a safe, don’t-even-think-about-it-evil-spirits distance across the street.
If you know your New Orleans history, or have ever seen the third season of American Horror Story, you may know that Madame Delphine LaLaurie was a sadistic sicko who maimed and murdered a handful of slaves she and her husband owned while living in the city in the early 1800s. The stories have been exaggerated over time — including AHS’ version, in which LaLaurie is portrayed by the one, the only, Kathy Bates — but what we know for sure is that funeral registers recorded the deaths of 12 enslaved people connected to the LaLaurie Mansion between 1830 and 1834.
The LaLauries’ cruelty may have never been exposed in full, if not for a 70-year-old enslaved woman who worked as a cook in the mansion. On April 10, 1834, this woman, whom the couple had literally chained to the stove, purposely started a fire in the kitchen, hoping to kill herself before the LaLauries did something even worse. People walking by outside intervened when they saw the flames, ultimately discovering a torture chamber in the mansion’s uppermost room where they found “seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated ... suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other”, according to a newspaper report printed in the New Orleans Bee.
As their fellow New Orleanians stumbled upon the horrors in the attic, the LaLauries slipped away, never facing the music for their heinous crimes. Their home, however, was not so lucky. In the days after the news spread, an angry mob showed up and tore the mansion asunder. The account in the Bee read like so:
“Nearly the whole of the edifice is demolished, and scarcely any thing remains but the walls, which the popular vengeance have ornamented with various writings expressive of their indignation … The loss of property sustained is estimated by some at $40,000, but others think this calculation exaggerated. It must, however, have been very great indeed, as the furniture alone was of the most costly kind, consisting of pianos, armoirs, bufets [sic], etc., etc., which were removed to the garret and thrown from thence into the street, for the purpose of rendering them of no possible value whatever.”
There’s not much mention of her husband, Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie, after the pair were exposed and forced to flee the city, but Madame apparently went to live with her mother and two sisters in Paris. French archives say she died 15 years later, on December 7, 1849, at age 62. And good riddance, at that.
The home that now sits at the intersection of Royal and Governor Nicholls streets in the French Quarter is not the same one the LaLauries occupied in the 1800s, which, as I just mentioned, was ransacked and essentially burned to the ground in April 1834. The mansion that exists on the property today was built in 1838 by a man named Pierre Trastour. Mr. Trastour built the home as a private residence, but it has since been used as a public high school, a conservatory of music, an apartment building, and for other uses. Perhaps the most fun of all the facts, however, is that actor Nicolas Cage bought the place in 2007 for $3.45 million (only to have the property foreclosed upon a couple years later).
10:56am, Friday — We head inside New Orleans’ renowned National World War II Museum. There’s nothing remotely funny I can add here, but if you still need a chuckle, check this out.
1:05pm — Anne Frank, or rather, her statue, sneaks into our family photo outside the museum. Again, not gonna touch that one.
Our final full day in the Big Easy kicked off with a visit to one of the nation’s finest history museums. The National World War II Museum offers the most in-depth look at the U.S.’s involvement in the deadliest war the world has ever seen. The museum campus is divided into several areas, but perhaps the centerpiece, if you will, is the “twin” exhibit called Campaigns of Courage, which walks visitors through the European and Pacific theaters of the war through the eyes of the men and women that experienced it all in real time. The two exhibits, “Road to Berlin” and “Road to Tokyo”, together comprise 19 galleries that do an amazing job of plopping you down in the jungles, beaches, mountains, and oceans where the most significant events of the global conflict unfolded.
As far as museums go, it’s probably one of the best I’ve ever visited — and I don’t throw phrases like that around all willy-nilly, okay? And that’s why I’ll say, right here, right now, that along with Lafitte’s, the WWII museum is an absolute must-see in New Orleans. So if you’re ever down this way, make sure to put it on the list.
2:02pm — A late lunch commences at the Original Pierre Maspero’s. The group a couple tables over decides to provide in-house entertainment, engaging in a seemingly endless game of patty cake.
After soaking up all that history, we had all worked up quite an appetite. Based on the recommendation of my barber back in Chicago, a seasoned New Orleans veteran (shout out Northside Barbershop!), we began to make way for Napoleon House over on Chartres Street. Upon arrival, we discovered a line out the door. Not a super long one, but just long enough that the line-less restaurant right across the street appeared increasingly inviting. Thus, we never entered the eatery bearing the name of the prolific Frenchman who was eventually exiled from his own nation, but rather found ourselves at Pierre Maspero’s, which boasts a little history of its own.
Anne Frank makes a cameo in our selfie at the National World War II Museum
The building that houses Pierre Maspero’s was built way back in 1788 and is one of the oldest standing structures in the French Quarter. In the early 1800s, the Lafitte brothers, Jean and Pierre, regularly rendezvoused at the restaurant, which was a coffee house at the time. In fact, it was the very place they met with none other than Andrew Jackson, future president of the United States, to plan the defense of the city ahead of the Battle of New Orleans, which would take place on Jan. 8, 1815, at the tail end of the War of 1812.
We, of course, had equally important and life-altering matters to attend to when we took our seats at a table in the front corner. The questions needing — nay, demanding — answers sprung forth: Were we in the mood for an appetizer? If so, would it be the Natchitoches meat pies, the fried alligator, or perhaps the crab cakes? What about the main course? The blackened chicken jambalaya sounds like a treat, but maybe I’d rather dig into some chicken and waffles. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I ordered a muffaletta (a New Orleans-style sandwich featuring Italian cold cuts and olive salad on Sicilian sesame bread) and it did not disappoint.
3:23pm — We finally make our way to some outdoor balcony seating, grabbing another round of adult beverages at Curio Bistro on Royal Street. The heat and humidity try their best to turn happy hour into sad and sour, but fail.
Friday afternoon was hot, hot, hot. Okay, not like desert-heat hot, but warm enough that the Yankees (us) decided one more trip to the pool area at The Natchez was certainly in order. We had a case of Trulys to polish off and it was the perfect opportunity to put in the man hours necessary to get the job done, besides.
7:25pm — We opt to try a New Orleans staple for dinner: Felix’s Oyster House on Bourbon. The line out the door and down the street has other ideas. Suddenly, Hard Rock Cafe isn’t looking so bad.
Our trip came to a close on Bourbon Street, as is contractually obligated. After dinner at the Hard Rock (I know, I know, so tourist-y of us; sue me), the other three decided to head back to the Airbnb, leaving me and my brother to our own devices.
The two of us strolled down the street, making stops at various shindigs, including an elongated sequel at Musical Legends Park, but there was really only one place that could fittingly serve as the final chapter of our four days in the Big Easy. So we made the half-mile walk and got a taste of everyone’s favorite old-time-y pirate bar one last time.
10:10pm — Lafitte’s is alive with the sound of drunk revelers and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”, courtesy of the man behind the piano. My brother and I sing along, knowing it’s likely our final song.
-LTH