Up Early, Headed to New Orleans

New Orleans travelog #1
SJC Airport - Friday, 21 Apr 2023, 7am

We were up early this morning, alarms ringing at 5am, to head to New Orleans. Rising early like this is kind of a necessary condition of traveling east, especially with connecting flights. Because the time zone change zaps a few hours, the choice is either (a) get up early, catch one of the first flights of the day, and get in early enough to see people/do something; or (b) get up at a normal human time, take a later flight, and don't get in until after dinner— or after bedtime. We've chosen (a) so we can get to our hotel, have a nice dinner in the French Quarter, and maybe carouse a bit at bars and clubs afterwards!

It's a fun plan. At the moment, though, we're only 10 miles from home. We're at the airport awaiting our flight out. We'll connect in Dallas (DAL airport, not DFW) en route to New Orleans.

Our flight is scheduled to depart at 7:45. Right now things look to be on time. That's another benefit of choice (a).... Leaving early means the flights are more likely on time because Southwest hasn't had time to fall behind yet. 🤣

Boarding should begin in maybe another 10 minutes.

Mandalorian S3E7: Back to Mandalore!

We're getting near the end of season 3 of The Mandalorian. After S3E7 there's only one more episode, the season finale, in the season. ...Which is a shame because the writers only found The Way after stumbling badly through the first half of the season.

In S3E7, "The Spies", Bo-Katan leads two now-united tribes of Mandalorians back to planet Mandalore to explore resettling it. She and main character Din Djarin, aka "Mando", lead an exploratory party down to the surface of the planet to find the Great Forge and scout for where they can build an outpost. With the epic space-western structure of the show (This Is The Way) it's predictable both good and bad things happen.

( Episode Spoilers )

Despite this being yet-another instance of sloppy writing this episode is otherwise strong and enjoyable. It'll be interesting to see how this gets wrapped up in the next episode, the season finale.

First Evening in New Orleans. Bourbon Street, Now and Then.

New Orleans travelog #2
French Quarter - Friday, 21 Apr 2023, 11:50pm

We landed in New Orleans around 4:30 today. Our flights from San Jose connecting in Dallas were thankfully uneventful... though not exactly on time. Remember I quipped that one benefit of leaving early in the morning is Southwest hasn't had time to fall behind yet? Well, the obvious corollary of that is when taking an afternoon flight....



Yeah, it was delayed. By about 30 minutes. But it could have been worse. The flight that was headed to New Orleans 90 minutes before us left about the same time we did. 😝

Getting to the hotel turned out to be a mess. Everyone at the airport wanted a ride from Uber and Lyft. I spent at least 20 minutes trying to hail a ride and having my request canceled after timing out. When we did finally get matched to a driver it was almost twice as expensive as the first offer.

Well, again, the benefit of leaving early is that we got in in time for dinner. Even with 45-60 minutes of delays we still got in in time for dinner.

The folks at the hotel gave us a few recommendations for dinner. We decided to walk up and down Bourbon Street and neighboring streets and check things out ourselves. We ended up eating at their recommendation. 🤣

After dinner we went to a jazz bar and sat and listened to a few sets from a local band. They weren't really jazz, but their lead was really talented. The man could play sax, sing, tell a story, and dance... pretty much all at the same time.

After that we basically headed back to the hotel. The trek back along Bourbon Street just wasn't that interesting. Maybe it's just the getting-older codger in me, but I found it too loud. And full of fat, drunk people. And reeking of pot smoke. ...Okay, 24 year old me wasn't a fan of those things, either. Bourbon Street is not what it used to be.