Another Trip this time to New Orleans | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Kathy Manos Penn is a native of the “Big Apple,” who settled in the “Peach City” – Atlanta. A former English teacher now happily retired from a corporate career in communications, she writes a weekly column for the Dunwoody Crier and the Highlands Newspaper. Read her blogs and columns and purchase her books, “The Ink Penn: Celebrating the Magic in the Everyday” and “Lord Banjo the Royal Pooch,” on her website theinkpenn.com or Amazon.

    To my readers, it must seem that I travel all the time, but my husband and I stayed home for almost two months before we went to see my sister in New Orleans in February.

    On the way, we spent a night in Fairhope, Alabama at the Bay Breeze Bed and Breakfast overlooking Mobile Bay. We soon wished we were spending another night so we'd have time to drink in the water view and relax in the garden area.

    We walked to Wintzel's for a dinner of fresh seafood and ate sweet potato pancakes the next morning. Our final stop was the quaint downtown area to explore a few boutiques before we drove on to New Orleans.

    Once there, we had just enough time to unpack before we kicked off the cocktail hour with Cosmos on the front porch. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law prepared a dinner of grilled shrimp with arugula and pasta. Homemade chocolate chip cookies topped off the evening. They're both foodies, so this was just the beginning.

    The next morning, my husband took off for the WWII Museum, and we girls toured the New Orleans Museum of Art. We first had to partake of café au lait and beignets at Morning Call at City Park. Only then could we visit the sculpture garden and the museum.

    We marveled at the "Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes" exhibit, featuring fashion by Alexander McQueen, Prada, Chanel, and others. As the museum website explains, "This exhibition's bold couture explores different archetypes of femininity ... [It] uses fashion to explore seven archetypal personality types of a Queen, or metaphorically, of a woman: The Mother Earth, Sage, Magician, Enchantress, Explorer, Heroine, and Thespian."

    We read the descriptions of the archetypes and chose the ones we thought most closely described us. I chose "Sage: Thinker | Philosopher |Risk-Taker | Educated and Wise." Those who know me well will agree that Risk-Taker doesn't fit but take that descriptor out, and it's pretty close. My sister chose "Thespian: Entertainer | Imaginative | Loves the Drama of Life," which fits her to a tee.

    It was crab salad and wine at Café Degas for a late lunch before starting back up at 5:30 with cocktails and then a trip to Ancora Pizzeria for dinner. Did I mention they're foodies?

    Saturday, my sister took us on an abbreviated version of the cemetery tour she regularly leads. She's not only a foodie but also a tour guide. We visited a few shops on Magazine Street and sampled gelato and eclairs at Sucré before enjoying my sister's homemade crab bisque for lunch. Once again, we met up with friends for early cocktails and dinner, this time at Irene's in the French Quarter.

    The evening's main event was seeing Tab Benoit at The House of Blues. Our friends are members of the Foundation Room, which means we bypassed the line of folks waiting to get in, had drinks in the private bar, and then went downstairs to front row seats for the concert. The plebs were standing in the pit a level below us in front of the stage. Ah yes, we felt special.

    After falling asleep at 1:30 AM, the aroma of ham and cheese croissants lured us out of bed our last morning. It was hard to get in the car to drive home, and it was harder still to recover from a weekend of rich food and late nights. Fortunately, my next trip was with girlfriends who are both diet and exercise conscious, though we did a bit of shopping and sipping too.

    Kathy Manos Penn is a Sandy Springs resident. Find her latest book, "Lord Banjo the Royal Pooch," and her collection of columns, "The Ink Penn: Celebrating the Magic in the Everyday," on Amazon. Contact her at inkpenn119@gmail.com, and follow her on Facebook, www.facebook.com/KathyManosPennAuthor/.