15/16(train)- Day 17

The train ride was uneventful as usual. This was our longest leg of travel on the entire trip and we didn't have business class let alone a sleeper car. We were able to make it work. The seats were surprisingly comfortable for coach but the hardest part throughout this leg was the people. The people on board the train, at least the ones in coach, were all quite strange. But we were able to tolerate the strange people due to the beautiful views outside the window.

 One of the strange things that we found was that the "wall" between Mexico and the United States is as tall as an average fence, and is well your average fence. Because of this, we realized that for most of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the border is much more of a concept than it is an actual restriction. I mean this in that if someone wanted to cross from either side all the would need is either a truck to drive through the cheap wood fence or a normal or small sized latter. 

 One of the cool things that we noticed along the way was how quickly the landscape changed from a rocky dry desert,

To an extremely wet swamp and marshland. this is due to slight changes in climate and proximity to the ocean.

We arrived in New Orleans around 9:21 pm, headed over to our Air BnB and had a nice night in with delivery pizza and tv. The next morning we got up late due to the time zone changes, and then caught the streetcar to the french quarter.

 Once in the french quarter, we explored the streets a bit, starting with heading down canal street and taking in the different types of architecture, as well as looking for visible damage or deterioration from Katrina. Strangely all this search yielded was a beautiful walk through a well-preserved neighborhood and a crappy shoe shine from some homeless stick-up artists.

 One of the things that surprised me, when it came to the architecture, was the amount of intricate ironwork that was on the buildings. For most of the Buildings where they would have used decorative wood trim to spruce up the design work they used decorative iron trim. The bars that supported the balconies weren't designed to melt into the building or disappear the second you left them, but to stand out. This is very different from many other buildings I Have seen in the past

 During this exploration, we passed many voodoo shops and got a look at that culture. One of the funny things that we noticed while doing this was that there was a clear difference between the real voodoo shops and the fake touristy ones. The real ones were harder to find, their signs weren't huge and their doors weren't obvious or even open, they melted into the surroundings and everything they sold was handmade. The fake touristy ones had bigger signs, neon lights in the windows and the door were always open, everything inside was much more expensive and much less organic, the voodoo dolls, came with tags stitched in, the bags of herbs were all from one company, and the dead give away, there where rows of plastic zombies for sale.

After we concluded our exploration of the streets we ventured further into the French market, exploring all of the different stands and street vendors. as they came up. At one stand we bought a back scrature, made with a gator hand, at another, we bought a mystery gift for my mom. All of them quite cool. When it came time for lunch we stopped at a seafood place in the market and, ordered steam crawfish as well as fried gator and shrimp. It was delicious and we went home early after that so we could clean up and look nice for dinner.

We somehow managed to get a reservation at the commander's palace, I am still not exactly sure how, but I am sure glad we did. For appetizers, I had a phenomenal Foie gras, served over a homemade blueberry cornbread, the cornbread as well as the blueberry balanced out the flavor of the Foie gras. My dad had the Soup Samplers, which was their famous turtle soup, then the chicken spice something, and finally their gumbo. They were all exquisite. For the entree, I had a crispy soft shell crab, it was amazing. there was no part of the crab, where you could feel the shell, it all tasted and felt like a perfectly cooked crab, and it blew my expectations out of the water. My dad had their fish of the day, which was a sheepshead, and it also was truly amazing. For dessert, I had the cheesecake, which had a caramel drizzle on top which brought out some truly amazing flavors from inside the cake. And my dad had the strawberry shortcake, which was served with freshly picked Strawberries, the flavor of the desert was exquisit and much better than any desert I have tried in the past.