I've lived in Boston for 3 St. Patrick's Days, and I've managed to be out of town for every one of them. Considering that Boston is practically Little Ireland, that seems pretty silly. This year, however, I more than made up for my previous lack of "Erin go bragh". I still wasn't in Boston on St. Patrick's Day...
There are many things to love about New Orleans - great music on every corner, Southern hospitality everywhere you turn, infinite amounts of powdered sugary goodness down at Cafe du Monde, and the best fried chicken you'll ever sink your teeth into. There is also a lot that is unique about New Orleans - it's a deep South city with a Cajun Creole twist. But the awesome and unique also combine in a trait that New Orleans lacks - an open container law. There are only a few other select places in the country that allow the public consumption of alcohol - most notably the Las Vegas strip and Beale St., in Memphis. Otherwise, you'd have to stumble on over to Butte, MT or tiny Fredericksburg, TX to legally sip on the street. While I understand some of the reasoning behind this law, I also find it to be kind of ludicrous, especially when countries like Japan have beer vending machines on the street. In any case, you get used to wandering out on the street with your drink pretty quickly in New Orleans - it's refreshing not to have to wait for everyone to finish up at the bar before moving on.
And so it was that we ventured out to the French Quarter for St. Patty's Day with some Cajun spice. We arrived at Canal St. to find people beginning to line the street, and I was immediately excited about the potential of catching a New Orleans parade. We checked our magic phones, and indeed, the Downtown Irish Club St. Patrick's Day Parade was headed our way from its starting point in the Ninth Ward. We headed to Bourbon St. to grab our first hand grenades of the weekend. Hand grenades, for those who don't know, are unbelievably sweet, unbelievably strong French Quarter specialties involving some mix of amaretto, liqueur, and Everclear. They will knock you to your knees suddenly and with no mercy. In any case, we waited out the parade along with the rest of Canal St. and had a blast catching beads thrown by mostly creepy old men (no sketchiness necessary, for anyone wondering). I can't even imagine what Mardi Gras is like, but it's high on my bucket list. We spent the rest of the night checking out everyone's green regalia and doing what one does on Bourbon St., counting our lucky stars to have gotten to spend a St. Patrick's Day there. I'm not entirely sure when we got back to the hotel, but Neil and I were up until 5 in the morning having one of those awesome conversations that rarely happen outside the 4 years of vacation we call "college."
Thus, having traded in a few of our 8 hours for good conversation, the next morning was a tad painful, but we managed to head out to Waffle House (see previous post) by noon. I made the boys return in time for me to watch Duke in the first round (now technically second round?) of the NCAA Tournament, before remembering that my best buddy from Projects Abroad India was in town for his bachelor party. I texted Maulin and found out he was literally a 10-minute walk away, and so abandoned the Harvard group's trip to the Garden District to crash the bachelor party for a few hours. Maulin's buddies were very welcoming and a lot of fun - and by the time I headed to meet my group for our farewell dinner down on Decatur, I was in some pretty good spirits (pun intended).
Following dinner, someone in our group spearheaded a walk down to Frenchman St., which they had heard was the "local" place to hang out in New Orleans. It was quite the walk, but certainly worth it in the end. Lined with laid-back bars and pubs, its corners alive with street jazz, it's a little bit of an antithesis to the excess of Bourbon. I grabbed a Purple Haze (made by New Orleans' own Abita Brewing Company) and lost track of time, standing on a street corner listening to a jazz band. A few hours (?) later, the jazz band packed up, and we gathered our group to trek back over to Bourbon for the nightcap. On the way, I received a text message on my dying phone from a good friend from college who just happened to be in New Orleans and on Bourbon St. I scampered off to meet Jorge at Pat O'Brien's piano bar. He was there with a couple of his med school buddies - 6 and a half foot tall former Texas and TCU football players who made me feel like a runt. We took in the piano amid sips of Patty O's famous Hurricane. I arrived back at the hotel sometime around 4am - to the relief of some of the Harvard kids, as my phone had died the second I entered Patty O's and they had lost me for good for the night. My flight was scheduled for 11:25 the next morning. Suffice it to say, the painful flight home was well worth the previous week of work and Bourbon St. ridiculousness.
I slept for 17 hours, until being coaxed out of my bed by my roommate, Sarah, around noon on Sunday. It was Southie St. Patty's, and the parade route runs right in front of our apartment. I crawled out of bed to get ready for St Patrick's Day: Round 2, finally in Boston.
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