Matt's Page

So according to this website that my brother found, the airport abbreviation for New Orleans is MSY because the airport itself used to be called Moisant Field, hence Moisant Stock Yards -- MSY. Who knew?

So Micaela and I took that vacation that I alluded to back on 1/12. We just got back from New Orleans, where Mardi Gras is starting up. Highlights from the trip (in no particular order):

• beignets and coffee at Café du Monde
• riding the beautifully restored St. Charles Ave streetcars
• parade watching
• muffulettas at Central Grocery
• a riverboat cruise
• ...and the Audubon Aquarium of Americas

Micaela had gone down on Wednesday to do a med school interview, and I joined her on Friday. Thankfully American has direct flights from Boston to New Orleans (anyone know why the New Orleans airport abbreviation is MSY?), but I have to say the AA gates at Logan are the worst (excepting the budget carriers like AirTran & Southwest).

The weather didn't really cooperate too much for us -- Friday and Saturday were both 50s and rainy, which is not conductive to the carefree, booze-addled Bourbon street wandering that people have come to expect from the city. Still, we managed to see a couple of parades and we walked around a good bit of the French Quarter. Saturday afternoon, because of the rain we decided not to do the haunted history tour we had planned, and instead we went to the aquarium. They have a great aquarium there -- Micaela liked it even better than the New England aquarium. While we were there we saw a really preachy 3D IMAX movie about the wonders of the ocean and the perils of pollution, which left us slightly disoriented & dizzy.

The big activity on Sunday was taking the battlefield cruise on the Creole Queen, a diesel-electric paddlewheel boat which took us from the Aquarium to Chalmette Battlefield, the site of the Battle of New Orleans. Ranger Danny, the docent there, gave a great little capsule history of the battles (actually there were 5 or so over a month's period), and inspired me to rent The Buccanneer, which has its own interpretation of the battle.

Anyways, I have to wind this post up cause it's time to start work... sorry there aren't any pictures from the trip -- the weather wasn't really conducive to photography, and we didn't bother to take a camera in the first place. It was a great little vacation, and I hope I get back to New Orleans sometime to see the things I didn't see.