Christmastime in New Orleans.

NOLA! We just came back from four days in the Big Easy, our second time there in a six-month span. How lucky can we get? You may recall that the last time Doug and I were in New Orleans, I was at a conference and Doug flew in on a red eye to spend less than 48 hours exploring the city while I was learning about copyright, contract negotiation, and other special library kind of things. This time we explored the city together, and neither of us spent any time inside the convention center. Again, how lucky can we get?

Pretty lucky, apparently. Look at all that we were able to do! We spent lots of time in the green spaces of New Orleans, like the Botanical Garden, and we walked around the some of the fascinatingly creepy above-ground cemeteries (like this one, Lafayette Cemetery No 1, in the Garden District, where some of Interview with a Vampire was filmed). We walked through Uptown, the Garden District, Audubon Park, and through a little of Mid-City. We spent a lot of time in the French Quarter, looking at the buildings and the people (there is no better city than New Orleans for people-watching, I've decided). We spent some time listening to music at Preservation Hall and Balcony Music Club, and went into some antiques stores along Magazine Street. We also took a tour of Oak Alley Plantation, probably one of the most photographed plantations around New Orleans, mainly due to the incredibly picturesque "alley" of live oaks leading up the long walkway to the front of the plantation. Like so: Not only are these trees visually stunning, but they don't shed leaves, either. These are my kind of tree.

Of course, when we weren't doing all these other fun things we were eating. Eating a lot. Doug ate this whole po' boy for lunch one day and then a few hours later enjoyed some oysters and some kind of shrimp dish for dinner. (That sandwich with the fried egg on top was my Croque Madame. And that was one of the healthier meals I had on the trip!) Desserts often went a little like this: We may have done a lot of walking on our trip, and our feet may have hurt, but my belly was hurting after a while, too. I'm just not used to that much food, or that much meat. Don't expect to stick to your diet when you're in New Orleans.

And now we're back, back home, back to reality, back to work (almost for me! I'm counting down the hours until I start my new job, and am getting a bit nervous about it. Get ready for me to be preoccupied and overly anxious for the next couple of months while I get my footing in this new situation...), and back to our normal routines. But one good thing that's keeping our vacation adrenaline still high is that it's Christmastime, and nothing seems hum-drum during the Christmas season. We put our tree up the night before Thanksgiving so that we'd be able to jump right into the spirit of things when we came back from NOLA. Here's our tree: And here's what we got to see in New Orleans while we were there: I've been blaring the Christmas music in our house all day every day, and plan to put some on my iPod later today so that I can have it to listen to while I'm on the train. A good part of my Christmas shopping is done and I've spent some time this weekend making some Christmas gifts for the kitties in my life (while listening to Christmas music and thinking about what kind of Christmas cookies to make next weekend). There's really nothing like Christmas to put you in good spirits.