48 Hours in Louisiana

Work has me traveling a lot lately. Most of these trips are roughly 48 hours, so I thought I'd kick off a "48 hours in..." series (inspired by the NY Times "36 hours in..." series). The first trip that kicked off what will be about a dozen trips over the next few months was to Louisiana.

On a Friday, around noon, our flight arrived in New Orleans and the second we walked out of the airport my jeans immediately shrink-wrapped to my legs. Even living in DC, I don't think I've ever experienced humidity quite like that, and it was about 96-degrees (fahrenheit). Our final destination was Baton Rouge and it started down-pouring the moment we got in our rental car. I have to say, first impressions between the airport and getting on the highway was that New Orleans was kind of a shithole - it was all concrete, power lines and run down strip malls. However, I realize the outskirts of many US cities pretty much look just like this and once you get to the Bayou, which is almost immediately after you get on the highway, it's pretty (if you can see beyond the pouring rain and ignore the oil refineries).

We drove to Baton Rouge through several sporadic deluges. Seriously - it's sunny one minute and the next it's raining so heavily that you can't see more than 3 feet in front of you (see above). But when we arrived it was sunny and even more humid from all the rain. We checked into our hotel: Doubletree by Hilton Baton Rouge - nice digs, especially for a highway-adjacent hotel. My room had almost its own mini living room with a couch and (2nd) tv. We changed clothes (to be dressed more appropriately for the heat) and went to do some of work. Our work that day had us mostly outdoors around the LSU campus and my coworker kept referring to it as "Africa hot." Luckily the rain stayed away while we worked so instead the sun just beat down on us mercilessly. After several hours of being outside, we sought refuge in the LSU gift shop to enjoy their air conditioning and drinking fountain. While I've always found excessive school spirit (or being an extreme fan of any one particular thing in general) to be rather strange, I was especially bemused to find that LSU has its own cologne.

We got several restaurant recommendations from people but the most recommended (primarily because of the view, I believe) was Tsunami, a rooftop sushi restaurant on the Mississippi river. While I'm going to write about this place in more detail, I would say overall it was a positive experience. Of course, it rained on our way to the restaurant but it cleared up quickly enough that we were still able to eat outside.

On Saturday, we were back at work, again near LSU, and it was Game Day for the Tigers, so the fans were out in full force. So was the Southern Hospitality - we were offered food and drink by several of the tailgaters we encountered. My favorite part was a 25-gallon drum of Jambalaya (making 25 gallons of anything taste good is pretty impressive to me).

After a long, very hot and humid day of work, we were exhausted so we stuck close to the hotel for dinner. We went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which is a chain, though I had never seen it before. Despite being in an area of town where the food options are almost exclusively fast food, it was damn good steak in a really nice atmosphere. I would say it was in the top 10 steaks I've ever consumed and the side dishes and drinks hit the spot, too.

Sunday, we drove back to New Orleans. Our flight didn't leave until after 4pm, so we were looking forward to spending some time wandering around the French Quarter. On our way there, though, the GPS took us a really weird way and we got off the highway and I have to say it was pretty depressing how much of the devastation of Katrina you could still see in parts of New Orleans. Anyway, I'll try to stick to the positive.

My coworker has spent a lot of time in New Orleans, so he showed us around. We started on Bourbon Street, which was smelly and disgusting. Maybe it was the heat magnifying the stench of urine and vomit but I couldn't handle it for very long. It was also strange because, while there weren't many people around, there were still a few people here or there who were wasted and partying like it was Mardi Gras and not noon on a Sunday in September. So it was very quiet and then you'd hear "wooo!" and other drunken yelling and someone would stumble out into the street. Then we walked up Royal Street, but almost all the stores were closed (come on, people, this is the 21st Century!)

We ate lunch at a little cafe on Jackson Square. The food was mediocre - I ordered a po' boy, thinking there was more to a po' boy than meat and bread. I was mistaken, although apparently it depends on where you go. So I had a basically flavorless sandwich for $12. But the view from that restaurant was fantastic (see above). We were looking right out onto the square where all the artists sell their stuff and there was the cathedral and it was just lovely.

We spent a significant amount of time browsing the art on the fence at Jackson Square. My coworker bought a few small paintings for his kids. I bought one medium-sized painting for my home, which I love. I would've bought more if I could afford to. There was one artist who I wanted to buy from but he had left a sign saying he was around the corner at a bar watching the Saints game and to text him if you wanted anything. Apparently that's not uncommon at Jackson Square but I found it surprising that he was that trusting.  I didn't want to wait around for him though, so I bought a painting from someone else. Most of the artists take credit cards and are willing to ship the art to you if you can't take it as your carry on (I guess another example of trust, since I don't know these people, but my painting arrived safe and sound).

Then we walked to the Mississippi River. The view of the French Quarter from there was quite nice (see above). But my coworker was focused on the shoreline to see if he could see some famous New Orleans-specific rat-type creature. We never saw one, which I think I'm thankful for. And then we headed to the airport, sticking our heads in the few open shops and galleries along the way back to our car. There was one cool antique store open that had all sorts of random stuff - weapons from various wars, old armor, antique art from different regions of the world, etc. But we didn't buy anything there, most of it was quite expensive.

San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua - Villas De Palermo

We stayed at the Villas De Palermo and while we really enjoyed it, I'm not sure I would recommend it to other people, at least not at the full price. See, we bought a Living Social deal where we got 4 nights stay, daily breakfast, one dinner and 4 activities all included. Looking at the regular prices on their website, I'm not sure it would be worth the money. However, I thought our package was a great value.

The Villas De Palermo is a group of villas. From what I could tell, they were all nearly identical 4-person (2 bedroom) villas, although there website seems to list some other options. For some reason, our living social deal was for 2-poeple even though we were in the 4-person villas, so we had a lot of extra space and on certain nights (if Mike was snoring a lot, for example), we'd even sleep in separate rooms.

Pluses:

• Large, nice villas that can house 4-5 people, so good for group trips
• Beautiful views from the balconies of the villas (see above) and from the dining area/pool
• Staff does their best to be helpful (although many of them don't speak much English so if you don't speak Spanish, there will be a significant language barrier to overcome).
• A shuttle between the villa and town during daytime hours. 
• Food was generally very good.

Minuses:

• Some of the villas are quite a hike up a very steep hill and are pretty far away from the front desk/restaurant/pool. Our villa happened to be one of the closest, which was convenient. I'm sure the villas higher up have even nicer views, but I'm glad we didn't have to hike those hills every day. That distance from the front desk brings me to the next and possibly biggest problem:
• There are no phones in the villas. I had read this in a few reviews too, so I was sort of prepared for that, and I would say this is definitely the biggest flaw. They say they're trying to be environmentally friendly but I honestly think maybe they were just too cheap to put in phone lines. At the very least they should have some kind of internet phone then or provide pre-paid cell phones for the guests. What if someone was sick or if there was an emergency? Or if you just have a question, it's a huge pain to walk all the way down to the front desk if you're in a villa that's not so close.
• It's not right in town (it's about 3km away) and the shuttle isn't particularly dependable - plus it stops running at 6pm and you usually have to take cabs home no matter what time unless you can coordinate with the shuttle for them to pick you up at a certain time in a certain place. We probably spent more money on cabs than just about everything else. I suppose we could've walked some of the time (though not after dark) but even the lowest villas are a fair amount of the way up a pretty steep hill and frankly parts of the road between town and the villas are a little sketchy.
• The windows rattle like CRAZY. I think it was windier while we were there than it is most of the rest of the year. But the windows are sort of loosely sitting in their tracks and the wood on wood banging got really loud at times. I kept trying to stuff rolled up pieces of paper in the gaps but that didn't always work and sometimes the maids (or my boyfriend) would take them out. I'm a light sleeper and this was a huge problem for me - sometimes it was so loud that I think even heavy sleepers would've been disturbed.
• Bugs: wear shoes/flip flops/slippers because there are ants and some of them looked like they had stingers. Also, most of the windows don't have screens so, inevitably, many bugs will get in. Not that's it's unbearable or anything, just be aware and shake out your clothes and stuff before putting them on. We also had a lizard in the villa at one point (in fact, it may still be there because it disappeared but we're not sure where to). 

The villas have free wi-fi, but that never worked all that well for us. We could usually check our email and send emails, but it would be really slow. And I kept trying to upload trip photos to various sites and FORGET IT. No matter what I tried, I could never get that to work.

To book all of our activities, we went through the concierge who (when we were there) was an American ex-pat named Brooke. She took pretty good care of us but the biggest problem was that she seemed like she was never on the property so if I had questions I had to have the front desk call her (felt really bad about that) or I had to try to communicate with her via email which wasn't always so successful, partially because of the internet situation and partially because I think she just wasn't checking it all that frequently. Nonetheless she was REALLY nice and took good care of us, but it was just another thing that was a little more difficult than it would be in a more developed country.

Brooke and the guy who took us surfing, Tim, also run an annual music festival in early February that sounds pretty awesome. We didn't get to go but from what she was telling us, it's grown quite large. It's called Pitaya Fest and there are lots of activities in the days leading up to the festival, as well as about a day and a half of music (some of which takes place at the Villas I believe), comprised mostly of Nicaraguan and Central American bands.

The hotel breakfast is mediocre (though most hotel breakfast is), and most people don't eat breakfast there after the first day (but we did because it was included in our package). However, the other food we had there - lunch one day and dinner one night - was really good. I had the nachos with chicken and the chicken was some of the best chicken I've ever had! And our one included dinner was a plate full of barbecued delicious meats (see abov): beef, sausage, chicken, fish and fried cheese. The food in Nicaragua in general (especially the meat) was REALLY good but I'll focus on that more in another post.

The pool is pleasant - a bit cold sometimes but we were there during the off season, so the wind was really bad. It's a nice pool with a beautiful view and they have live music on Sunday afternoons.

Overall, I really enjoyed my stay at the Villas and at our discounted price, it was a great deal. I just don't think I can recommend it at the full price to anyone. However, if you're looking to do the expat thing and you like to surf, buying a villa or a share in a villa might not be a bad idea for you.

San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua - Overview

This year's "get out of the cold winter" trip was to Nicaragua. We bought a package through Living Social that included 4 nights stay at the Villas De Palermo in San Juan Del Sur (SJDS, for short) and a number of activities. While I really wanted to travel around Nicaragua more (particularly visit Lake Nicaragua and some of the many volcanoes in the area), Mike was worried about safety concerns and I didn't really have much vacation time to work with, so we ended up just staying in SJDS. In this post, I'll do the overview and then I'll do more detailed postings about the various aspects separately.

Safety
Nicaragua is a pretty poor country, so obviously tourists need to be careful. Petty crime is common and violent crime, while getting better, still happens. However, I think much of the warnings you'll read on the internet about it are based on how dangerous it was, not how dangerous it is. We got all freaked out when reading about how dangerous it is but we had no problems and SJDS in particular seemed pretty safe. I think Managua might be a little rough (but my impression was that there isn't much to see there, anyway). Oh, and don't go to the Caribbean side of the country - there's big drug cartel problems there and apparently those regions are actually autonomous regions. Managua, Grenada and SJDS are all on the Pacific coast and they are probably the areas you should stick to.

The 2-2.5 hour drive from Managua to San Juan Del Sur was actually one of my main worries about the trip because everything we read said one of the most popular forms of robbery was to put roadblocks up (such as a big tree branch in the road) and then rob you when you stop to move it and we were in what was obviously a van for tourists. I was more than a little nervous but we encountered no problems. SJDS itself is filled with tourists and American expats and I guess they've been cracking down on crime there, so it seemed perfectly safe to me. Of course, don't be an idiot: don't flaunt your money, don't be out late at night (but there's no reason to be because there is not really any nightlife), keep your belongings close to you, etc. We had also heard that taking taxis was a bad idea (that the taxi driver or some other robbers would take you to the middle of nowhere, rob you and leave you there) but we took several taxis and had no problem. Maybe that's a problem in other areas but labeled taxis in SJDS are generally considered safe. Once the guy did pick up a few other people, which wasn't ideal because the small cab got quite crowded, but whatever.

History & Language
Nicaragua is a small country with a population about the size of Philadelphia but it has a complex and violent history of wars, uprisings, and international politics. I suggest you look into it to learn more about the history but the main reason I mention it is that there is still some political unrest so you need to be careful not to end up in the midst of a protest, which often turn violent. It seemed like these mainly happen in Managua, but a fellow traveler said that they had to take a detour on their way to SJDS because of a strike.

Spanish is the language, but Nicaraguans (or Nicas as they say for short) actually pronounce it a lot differently than I had ever heard before so I had a very hard time because I don't know Spanish that well as it is. For one, they drop a lot of their "s" sounds, particularly at the end of words. There were a few other differences that someone explained to me but I honestly can't remember them now... People who spoke better Spanish than I didn't have as hard a time, but I definitely had issues and so did Mike who has a lot more Spanish experience than I do. Also, I assumed a lot more of the hospitality (hotel and activity) people would know more English than they did. Most of them actually spoke little to no English.

San Juan Del Sur
There is sort of a finite number of things to do in SJDS: surfing is the primary activity (which actually takes place at beaches north or south of SJDS but SJDS seems to be the hub where everyone stays/lives); then there's boating, fishing, turtle or whale-watching (if you're there at the right time), zip lines and horseback riding. Unless you really like surfing, I would honestly recommend you only spend a few days there (3-4 seemed to be about the right amount). There's not much to see in SJDS itself, though it's a cute little town (population 2700). It has a central "downtown" area with lots of shops and restaurants. I will say, the food was amazing. I had one mediocre meal my whole time there (not including breakfast at the hotel which was always mediocre). The town is also beautiful and almost anywhere you go from the center of town by the bay, you're going to be going uphill so you will have beautiful views.

Cost
Nicaragua is pretty cheap, although accommodations don't always seem to match that price. But we would have amazing gourmet meals for two people with booze for about USD$30 and you could get really good meals from smaller food stands or market shops for C$60 (about $3). Taxis weren't as cheap as I thought they would be, but they weren't bad... The taxi between town and where we were staying, the Villas De Palermo, (about 3km) cost us C$60-80 ($3 or $4 - they also usually take USD too) depending on how willing the driver was to negotiate.

Things I Wish I'd Done
If I were going to go back to SJDS, I would stay in town. Most of all, I really wish I had gone to Grenada and spent some time at Lake Nicaragua and the various volcanoes there. There's a cloud forest that sounded cool at the top of dormant Mombacho, but you can also take tours of active volcanoes. The island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua also seems worth a visit. Also worth a visit I've heard is the massive market in Masaya, which is sort of between Managua and Grenada.

Baltimore, MD - the Inner Harbor

I was lucky to be staying in a hotel just a few blocks away from Baltimore's Inner Harbor. We were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn, which has one of the nicest gyms I've ever seen and is smart enough to have a separate pool for small children, so it's actually pleasant to swim there for adults. Plus it had free wi-fi, which should be a requirement for all hotels but unfortunately is not. The Inner Harbor is a really nice area, not nearly as dangerous as people keep telling me the rest of Baltimore is. We were there on a beautiful weekend, and so we spent a lot of time just walking around the harbor, people watching and seeing the sites. There's a cute little red lighthouse that you can go up into, and many ships from different eras and even a submarine to check out. The harbor was bustling with people, including street performers in a little square that gathered quite the audience. It was a really pleasant little area, though I was disappointed that most of the restaurants seemed to be big chain restaurants - I wanted to eat on the water but I didn't want to eat somewhere that I could eat in NY.

My favorite Inner Harbor experience was paddle boating. I always find paddle boating on a sunny day to be quite relaxing, and it was interesting to see the harbor from the water in a teeny tiny paddle boat. You can go in a regular paddle boat for $11/half hour (half an hour is typically plenty of paddle boating) or you can go in a brightly-colored "Chessie" (pictured above - the Chesapeake Bay's version of Nessie, the Lock Ness monster) for $17/half hour. We chose the regular paddle boat because the wait was longer for a Chessie, but the Chessies seemed bigger, so they're probably more family friendly for those of you with kids. Plus they're just a lot of fun. Definitely a great activity when the weather is nice.

Ft. Lauderdale - The Embassy Suites

If you can afford it, I have to recommend The Embassy Suites if you find yourself staying in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I've always been a fan of Embassy Suites hotels in general but this one is particularly gorgeous, with a beautiful garden court in the center of the building (where you can eat your continental breakfast and have free drinks from 5-7pm), a lovely heated swimming pool and hot tub with palm trees to shade you from the sun and a sort of pueblo-style architecture with warm colors and stucco. The one downside is that the hotel doesn't have free wi-fi (and I find it utterly riciculous that they want you to pay $10/day on top of what you're already paying for your room just for wireless internet). I spent a great deal of time by that pool though because of the lack of wireless, so perhaps it wasn't the end of the world (though I had hoped to get more work done while on my trip). And the pool was nice and empty because it was February and there was a "cold front" (ie it was only 67 degrees F, but that was way warmer than the -2 it was here in NYC and the sun kept me nice and warm).