New Orleans, Monday and Tuesday
May. 25th, 2005 06:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienNew Orleans: Monday Night
The hotel and the convention center both have more than adequate air-conditioning. The half-mile between them, unfortunately, doesn't. More good local food for lunch and dinner: seafood gumbo; turtle soup; Louisiana speckled trout. Also, dinner conversation turned to Pratchett and Stephenson and certain Japanese animated movies whose titles I recognized from rasff and thereabouts. I haven't yet worked out how to get the best from the camera in the difficult lighting conditions of a hangar-sized exhibition hall; it tends to figure out for itself that it needs long exposures, which aren't really suitable for subjects even as mobile as a talkative astronomer. Today's outfit turned out to be one that works best when I have good posture. I don't have good posture when I'm carrying a 20lb bag over one shoulder.
Tuesday Night:
Dinner (yet more gumbo and jambalaya and bread pudding) on a riverboat cruise at sunset, coming back to the glittering towers of the city as dusk fell; paddlewheels churning and flags flying against the pink-grey sky, passing freight ships and barges and other paddleboats on the wide grey river, the breeze just cool enough to be pleasant. Sweeping on past the landing stage and under the great bridge as a band played and dancers whirled on the top deck, and then coming about again and back to a landing stage picked out in lights. Some of my colleagues decided they wanted to go on to the Voodoo Museum afterwards, but I decided I'd had enough fun -- and been on my feet long enough -- for one day.
The hotel and the convention center both have more than adequate air-conditioning. The half-mile between them, unfortunately, doesn't. More good local food for lunch and dinner: seafood gumbo; turtle soup; Louisiana speckled trout. Also, dinner conversation turned to Pratchett and Stephenson and certain Japanese animated movies whose titles I recognized from rasff and thereabouts. I haven't yet worked out how to get the best from the camera in the difficult lighting conditions of a hangar-sized exhibition hall; it tends to figure out for itself that it needs long exposures, which aren't really suitable for subjects even as mobile as a talkative astronomer. Today's outfit turned out to be one that works best when I have good posture. I don't have good posture when I'm carrying a 20lb bag over one shoulder.
Tuesday Night:
Dinner (yet more gumbo and jambalaya and bread pudding) on a riverboat cruise at sunset, coming back to the glittering towers of the city as dusk fell; paddlewheels churning and flags flying against the pink-grey sky, passing freight ships and barges and other paddleboats on the wide grey river, the breeze just cool enough to be pleasant. Sweeping on past the landing stage and under the great bridge as a band played and dancers whirled on the top deck, and then coming about again and back to a landing stage picked out in lights. Some of my colleagues decided they wanted to go on to the Voodoo Museum afterwards, but I decided I'd had enough fun -- and been on my feet long enough -- for one day.