Heather Haddad

I’m back from New Orleans, and I had so much fun! Anthony and I drove there where we met up with my dad to go to the IPCPR cigar trade show. As usual, it was four days of drinking, smoking, eating, staying up late and not sleeping much. Very fun, very tiring. I got a lot of work done, smoked lots of new product, yadda yadda, but the best part was the after hours stuff. For starters, we had a magnificent dinner at Tony Moran’s where the owner created a special dish for me since I’m a veggi, and I had the best caprese salad I’ve ever had. I never knew caprese salad could taste different from one place to the next, but this one had amazing mozzerella cheese on it. I mean, A-MAZE-ING, and this is coming from a woman who has made her own mozzerella cheese from scratch at home.

I also enjoyed many nights at the Don Leoncio Cigar Lounge were I danced meringue with Joey from Padilla, spoke Spanish 101 with Don Pepin Garcia, drank Chimay with the Stogie Review guys, chatted up Carlito Fuente and more. As much fun as our many nights there were, I have to say the highlight was happening upon a Karaoke lounge where Rocky Patel was dancing. I decided to dance with him, however as soon as I walked up to him and started dancing, he turned heel and walked away. I WAS DISSED BY ROCKY PATEL! Priceless. Best part of the trip, hands down!

Anyways, after four days of smoking, I left feeling like I had a cigar lodged in my lung. I took two days off and have commenced my normal smoking schedule since. If fact, I will sign off and go smoke one of the many sample sticks from the show. Salut!

What a fun weekend! New Orleans is a very cool city. We stayed with my friend Beverly just a few miles from the French Quarter. Our first night there we wandered around the Quarter and saw the big Harrah’s Casino and the Mississippi River, and then Beverly took us to a Daiquiri shop (that’s a big thing there- there are no open container laws, so you can drink in the car, on the street, it’s like Vegas but worse) and then we went to Frenchman’s Street, the place where the locals go to hang out for a night of cocktails and dancing.

New Orleans is pretty much the way it’s depicted in media. There really are bands just wandering around the street playing music, there are tons of people wandering around, throwing beads off balconies, and the architecture is very, very cute. We were lucky to go at a time when the humidity wasn’t too bad.

Our second day there, we explored the French Quarter and Bourbon street in depth. First, we ate at the famous Cafe du Monde for their beignets and coffee with chickory. Beignets were a big disappointment- they basically taste like a funnel cake at the fair. Not my sort of thing. And the coffee with chickory tasted pretty much like coffee without chickory to me. On the bright side, it’s a cheap breakfast.

We spent the rest of the day just walking up and down the quarter, looking at the flea market and the cute little stores, and eating a lot. My favorite store was this AMAZING antique store (you should look at their web site). It was more like looking in the treasury of some palace in Europe. HUGE diamonds. Intricate wood inlay pieces. Gold clocks and candelabra. China. King Louis XV’s personal plans to invade England. It was insanely beautiful stuff, and most of it was selling for $300,000 and up. Here are some things we saw:

We also found this cool hotel that had a carousel bar- the bar seats literally spun around, and the bar itself was the carousel. It would probably make you sick, even though it turns really slow, but it looked way cool.

The French Quarter was strange, because parts are really nice and cute, but then parts get pretty sketchy quickly. Like Bourbon street. It’s dirty. It’s full of voodoo lounges and bars and strip clubs (and even a live sex show). But go one street over, and it’s antique shops and art galleries. It’s a very eclectic city!

The food in New Orleans is supposed to be really great, but it’s not really if you’re a vegetarian. Everything we had was pretty mediocre, and all of the famous dishes have meat (crawfish, gumbo, jambalaya…). We did eat at Emeril’s restaurant, but only for dessert, and it was truly one of the worst desserts I’ve ever had.

As for Katrina stuff, we didn’t see any of it. I heard that most of the damage is farther outside of the tourist areas. We also didn’t go to the famous cemeteries (although we drove past them), because they are near the projects and we were warned by several people that they are very dangerous. New Orleans as a whole seems pretty dangerous if you wander into the wrong parts. Beverly was telling us about all of the murders and theft that take place in the city.

We were going to go on a swamp tour, also, but they canceled it, so we didn’t get to. Next time! It was a really nice weekend, but then we had to drive 8 hours back to Austin. Ugh. At least I saw my first armadillo (road kill).

Check out more of my flickr photos of New Orleans here.

I wanted to write a blog about my weekend in New Orleans, but Flickr is having problems on their site and I can’t upload my photos. Hopefully it will be fixed late tonight or tomorrow and I can do a post. Hold tight!

Right now I am lounging about in a hotel room in Fort Worth. This bed has very soft sheets. And nice down pillows. I have to check out in an hour, and it saddens me. However, I will get to explore downtown Fort Worth for a few hours.

Why am I doing this? Well, I am in Fort Worth with Anthony who had business thing up here and I had some business to do up here as well, so I tagged along. Then, this weekend, we are hitting the road and driving to New Orleans! I am so excited to be spending the weekend there, I have always wanted to go! It’s about an eight hour drive, but we’re breaking it up into two days, so it won’t be so bad. Plus, we have War and Peace on CD, so we’re going to get some “reading” done on the way. We’re going to be staying with an old friend of mine, a girl I used to wait tables with at Coco’s when I was 16. We were also workout buddies at the UofA and we’ve kept in touch loosely over the years. She’s now a geologist with Shell, and I think it will be a real kick to see her again.

But let’s talk about Tobin Smith, shall we? He’s one of those talking heads on Fox News (on Bulls and Bears), the author of a NYTimes best selling book, and owner of ChangeWave. He was also on this month’s cover of a certain magazine my husband writes for:

We met Tobin and some people from BizRadio at Del Friscos- an old school steak house where everyone in there was clearly loaded. It looked like something out of a mafia movie- everyone in suits, smoky air, steaks. Attention high-priced call girls: this is the place to be. We only stayed for a round of drinks, but it was interesting to get a glimpse of what my husband does- basically he rubs elbows with very wealthy and powerful people. Yesterday he was on the phone with the CFO of an 80 billion dollar bank! I’m jealous. I want to come on these trips all of the time with him!

Well, I’m off to check out of the hotel and to visit the cigar shop down the street.