Day 7

Today we did a trip to the Audubon Zoo. We hopped on this old trolley/street car thing and went across town. Wow, was the streetcar ever noisy, and slow. It was like if you put a giant wooden box on the ground and dragged it around with a rope. The street car went along St. Charles which is the main parade route. As a result there were so many trees filled with beads.

We got off at Audubon Park and chose to walk the whole way to the zoo instead of take the shuttle. We walked across a huge park and golf course, and finally got there. We were noticing weird moss on the trees that is grey and fuzzy and just sort of hangs from the trees. It is called Spanish Moss.

The zoo was very fun! We got to see all kinds of cats including white tigers, lions, jaguars, and bobcats. The foxes were extremely cute. Two grey foxes were cuddling each other, while one red fox was running around and teasing another red fox. I guess it must have been a chilly day for the animals because they were cuddled up with one another. All of the bobcats were licking each other, and the otters were wriggling around and cuddling each other. We also saw huge tortoises, monkeys, gorillas, elephants, and giraffes. One of the gorillas was lying back with his legs up the wall and giving us a look like “I am really bored”.

After one big streetcar ride back, we were completely streetcar-ed out. We did however get to see huge houses on the way. They were all built in a style that has big pillars out front of all the houses and have lots of balconies.

We wanted to try oysters, so we went to an Oyster Bar and ordered a dozen and a half oysters on the half shell. They were huge! We were expecting little ones, but some of these oysters were almost as big as fried eggs. We both liked the oysters. They were especially good with lemon and a bit of cocktail sauce on them, but they were really slippery on their way down our throats.

This evening we went out for jazz. First, we visited Pat O’Brien’s again to see their dueling piano bar, which had sounded intriguing. It was very neat! There were two pianos on the stage and they had a tonne of music on them. They would play requests from people. As we came in they played classic songs like “Hotel California” and “House of the Rising Sun”. Some silly guy kept yelling out “Free bird!” And they were like umm noooo. The pianists sang along with all of their songs. They must have been really good at improvisation and sight-reading.

After O’Brien’s, we went down the street to hear a local jazz band. They had a trombonist, bassist, pianist and drummer, and called themselves “Jumbo Shrimp”. We were sitting right in the front row and got to hear a lot of neat music. They were impressive too! They played and sang “Girl From Impanema” without ever having played it before.

The funny thing about the evening was that it was a Thursday, two days after Mardi Gras. Walking down Bourbon street was a little less crowded but still happening. There were probably ten bars with live music that night.