Hola from NOLA

This picture seems like the appropriate way to celebrate the day in New Orleans and my last 24 hours with David. As you've duly noted, we've been committed to a week of outstanding eating, and today was no exception.

We began the day with brunch at Elizabeth's, where we met up with Joel's daughter Christina.

Funny story about this place. I had met the owner's parents, who are friends of Bonnie's, when I was in California, and they had recommended trying it for brunch when I realized I'd be in New Orleans on a Sunday. I had mentioned it to David and he'd been pretty neutral about going there, saying that he had plans for us in New Orleans (he lived here for nearly three months five years ago). Somewhere along the line he mentioned that the place he had in mind for brunch had this amazing praline bacon. How funny, I said, Elizabeth's has that, too.

Finally, at some point yesterday, David looked on Google maps to see where we'd be going. And guess what? It was Elizabeth's. We'd been talking about the same place the whole time.

Really attractive spot with incredible food. We all shared the famous praline bacon, which is the most seriously decadent food you can imagine -- think sweet AND salty AND chewy AND nutty -- and highly addictive, then David and I tried two dishes and sampled Christina's pick as well. Here's the first: duck and sweet potato hash on a waffle.

It's like three dishes in one. That's about all of the dish the two of us could pack away. The waffle was saturated with syrup, there's a spicy pepper jelly on top, and it's just an insane combination.

Our other pick was eggs sardou -- poached eggs atop artichoke bottoms with spinach and hollandaise sauce.

And in case that wasn't enough, Christina shared her cream cheese-stuffed French toast.

As you can imagine, after that there was nothing to do but walk and walk and walk. Which is what we did, through rain that was sometimes drizzly, sometimes quite strong. Mid-afternoon we took a break (and a cab with the cabbie listening to "Car Talk") up to the Garden District. It was time to try a Pimm's Cup, a popular New Orleans drink, at the Columns Hotel.

We enjoyed the relaxed setting and the beautiful views inside and out.

That's a streetcar not named Desire. We didn't grab it right away, preferring to walk some more first. Our trek took us past one of New Orleans' famous above ground cemeteries. The cloudy sky made it look even eerier.

We wandered back to St. Charles and picked up the streetcar to head back to the hotel.

It was a fun ride followed by a this-is-getting-harder walk. Once back to the hotel we took off our wet shoes (David dried his with his hair dryer -- they were so wet they were squishing out water as he walked), put our feet up for a bit, and figured out dinner strategy.

Too tired to wander far, we walked over to the Gumbo Store. There we sampled both seafood/okra gumbo and chicken/andouille sausage gumbo. David preferred the former. I preferred the latter. We also tried pasta with a tasso (bacon) and shrimp cream sauce. And a side of spinach.

All yummy and a nice, easy five-minute walk back to the hotel. We stopped at the car to check the mileage and pronounce David the winner for most miles covered by a companion -- 2000 miles in 6 days.

I'm of course sad as can be that we'll be splitting up tomorrow. We have such a good time together and I know that I'll be missing him like crazy. He's such a wonderful guy -- so funny, so bright, so caring, and so well grounded. I think I'm the most blessed person in the world to call him my son!