One for the Collection

The cathedral of St. Louis was founded in 1720. The current building dates from 1792. I think that argues, actually, for some architectural stability. The first archbishop is buried beneath the altar, with 47 other people. I was kind of horrified to learn this, but then discovered that most of these are prelates, and they didn't just wind up there in some sort of sarcophagus accident.

Despite being a non-Catholic, I collect cathedrals, and that's one of the first places I seek out in a new city. I have prayed in cathedrals from Pittsburgh to St. Augustine, my favorite being St. John the Baptist in Savannah, because of the brightly painted interior.

Cathedrals are designed to draw one's attention to God, particularly to the majesty and greatness of God, something that we Protestants tend to miss with, say, the Porter's Bottom Holiness Tabernacle and Upholstery Shop. In a cathedral, the world is hushed. The ceiling soars away at the top of columns that are themselves reminders of the necessary vertical element in our relationship with the divine. In the days before printing presses made the Bible accessible, the stained glass of the cathedral illustrated the stories of the faith for a largely illiterate population.

St. Louis is a beautiful cathedral wrapped in a rather humble exterior. The narthex, particularly, is grim and brown, and like everything else, watermarked. Once inside, though, the cathedral is bright with paintings on walls and ceilings, and wonderful windows. The clerestory windows are geometric designs, refreshingly plain, while the main windows depict scenes from the life of Christ. The altar is an elaborate baroque creation dating from 1852. It's interesting that the church's literature about its architecture and ornamentation stresses, repeatedly, its compliance with Vatican II. Not sure what that's about, really, but I enjoyed standing in the reverential atmosphere, breathing the cathedral-smell of candles and incense.

A Day on the Town

Today, as promised, was architecture day, with several forays into other areas. Our mid-morning stroll ended at the Court of the Two Sisters, where brunch was a lively outdoor experience. Hank had a crawfish, much to his own consternation and the amusement of nearby diners. One couple were sort of helpful, admitting that they'd been similarly balked by the crustaceans the night before. Our Hero finally wrestled the tail loose, and announced that it did, in fact, taste like lobster. And the entrails? "I guess they taste like entrails," was his astute assessment. He decided that the best part of the crawfish was the tail, and he'd stick with that. I applauded.

The brunch is a serious foodie affair, with a number of delicious things that just have no Appalachian equivalent. House-made andouille sausage, brioche, crawfish salad . . . it's awesome. The other awesome thing was that, in honor of the occasion, Hank had the jazz trio serenade me with "Where or When," a tune made famous in our personal history by Judy Collins.

We finished brunch in the outdoor court just as the rain started, and so we fled across the street to an art gallery and talked about jewelry making with the owner until the downpour turned drizzle. From there, we've spent much of the day wandering the French Quarter in a desultory way, looking for interesting buildings, taking pictures, and generally being tourists.

The French Quarter is FULL of tourists, and this makes people here happy. Part of our afternoon was spent on a mule-drawn-wagon tour, where our guide told us, rather plaintively, how happy New Orleans is to have the tourists back. You cannot go far in this city, or talk to many people, without coming smack against Katrina and the aftermath. Coming in on the train, for instance, you notice that every block has houses that are boarded up, ruined, abandoned. Even here, downtown, the building across from us -- and we're on the 19th floor, looking into the side of it, so it's not small -- has boarded windows and broken glass.

It's the elephant in the living room. New Orleans is not the city it used to be -- much of that old city has yet to be rebuilt, and maybe it won't be. The people here now are the ones who believe that the place can come back. The others left. Tony, the attendant in our sleeping car, used to live here. He and his wife lost their house in the storm, and he moved to Georgia. He's from New Orleans, but he said he couldn't live here anymore, couldn't take the risk, didn't want to keep starting over.

On the other hand, Jeff, our waiter this morning, couldn't wait to come back. He loves this city, hurricanes be damned. (He's from Minnesota, where crawfish are bait and palm trees are postcards. This probably has something to do with it.) I'm just a tourist, and I don't have a right to an opinion, but I stood on the bank of the Mississippi River this afternoon, having walked UP to get to it, and looked at a continent's worth of water roiling past. The river is 210 feet deep here, miles wide, and the city settles at the rate of three inches a century. "We just have to hope we never get another storm like Katrina," our tour guide said. Me, I really don't like the odds.

A Bluestocking on Bourbon Street

Okay, let's imagine that my idea of a good time is architecture, with a non-fiction book to help me calm down afterwards. Now let's drop me onto Bourbon Street, and see what happens. I wish I had pictures.

I'm not sure what I had imagined, but Hank leaned over and commented, at one point, that it was like Busch Gardens on crack. Music poured out of every open doorway, people sloshed into the street from every direction and in every possible way, and even though Mardi Gras was a while back, a fair number of people wore beads. Hmmm. Wonder how they got them?

The thing is, there's a lot of humanity to be watched, and a lot of music to listen to, and it was fun. I was a little surprised at that last bit, because this really isn't my deal. When I was looking completely overwhelmed, Hank steered me into Cafe Beignet, where we had excesses of our own -- pecan tarts, bread pudding, and, of course, beignets that were -- thank you Jimmy Buffett -- too hot to touch. All the while we were doing this, we sat at a little table in an open courtyard listening to a Dixieland jazz band fronted by a guy who calls himself Steamboat Willie. (I informally dubbed his bass player Slick Willie and his drummer Wet Willie, and that pretty much sums them up.)

Thing is, Steamboat Willie could flat play a trumpet, AND a banjo. So it was good music, lots of sugar, and welcome to New Orleans.

I got back to our hotel room (on the 19th floor of the Pere Something), took a shower, and honestly, literally, do not remember closing my eyes.

More Fun from the Train

Trains are a little bit like cruise ships. You spend a lot of time eating. And napping. And, of course, waking up. These are kind of backward, but you get the idea. Our Exhibit A especially prepared himself for this trip by not sleeping for the 36 hours previous, thereby guaranteeing himself a good night's sleep on the train . . . and a good morning's sleep . . . and several good minutes in the afternoon.


And here are the random musings for this afternoon as well.

The Talladega River. Flooding. A bit scary, actually. This was the first big bridge I was awake for since Danville. Very wet, Alabama.

Pell City, home of the Panthers. I LIKE a place that puts its name right where train passengers can find it. When I rule the world, everywhere will have to put its name out front, so you don't have to strain your eyes looking at auto license plates to figure out what state you're in. Furthermore, I'm gonna require that states paint big, wide boundary lines that can be seen from airplanes, too.

Long Honking Tunnel. Somewhere east of Birmingham. I like tunnels almost as much as bridges.

East of Birmingham. The sun is shining, at least for now, and the wind is blowing the rain from the trees in flashes of silver.

Mounds. 900 years ago, some native tribes built a bunch of mounds for ceremonial purposes. The train goes right by these, and it's very strange. Green circles of earth coming almost straight up from the ground.

And By the Way

I finally fixed the time stamp, so that it shows EDT instead of PST. Woohoo. AND, I will be photographing the room soon, so you can see our cozy rolling home, complete with sleeping spouse!

Rolling Through Georgia

Sometime around midnight last night I sent Sarah a text message, to wit: “I can't sleep; I'm too excited.” Hank was already asnooze in his upper berth, but I lay in the darkness and watched the world roll by, afraid to miss anything. It wasn't until Salisbury that the tiredness kicked in and I was able to sleep. Even then, it was a fractured sleep; trains are surprisingly bouncy. At one point, I would have sworn we'd hit a moose. Sometimes we'd stop to let another train pass. Sometimes we stopped at stations – Greensboro, Salisbury, Charlotte. After that, I slept and did not remember.

This is not like ANYthing we've ever done before. Our rolling bedroom is equipped with a shower/toilet combination that's very weird. We have two berths that we're not eager to convert back to the day benches. They are surprisingly comfortable, mostly because each one is the seat itself, topped with a separate mattress. When the sleeping car attendant made our beds last night, he put the mattresses on top already fitted with sheets and blankets. Hank is napping, in the lower one, despite having three cups of very good coffee at breakfast. The room is compact, the way I'd imagine a cabin is on a ship. We have high shelves to store gear (really only accessible from the upper berth), and stowage space under the lower berth.

We had breakfast in the dining car, beginning while it was parked in Atlanta. I can't get the hang of walking on a moving train. Somewhere in mid breakfast, the train pulled out, and we ate omelets and French toast while watching downtown Atlanta slide by. Our waiter, Leroy, brought us coffee, which he poured with complete confidence, despite the train lurching all over the place. I would have dumped coffee all over me, the dining car, and possibly all the other diners.

Now we're rolling through the city of Bremen, Georgia, at 9:50 a.m. It's raining in Bremen, but rain doesn't faze us; we're not driving. What we ARE doing is marveling that the entire state of Georgia seems to be covered in kudzu. As a matter of fact, kudzu and red mud seem to be the order of the day. It's very green out there, despite the rain, except in the places where the red clay has made little rivulets of water the color of cream of tomato soup.

One further observation, while I wait for Birmingham and a chance to upload: The train is much quieter than we expected. At slower speeds, it feels like we're floating along, frictionless. Of course, when we speed up, it's like being in the back of somebody's pickup truck – somebody who doesn't think much of his suspension.

Preparing for Launch

. . . or is that "lunch?" Today we leave for the big train adventure, and because my brain works this way, I'm writing about it instead of packing. Well, some things are already packed. The important things -- my journal, sketchbook, watercolors, and books. I'm taking Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Annie Dillard's newest, Teaching a Stone to Talk, and, finally, the highly recommended Ella Minnow Pea.

This evening we take the train from Charlottesville to New Orleans. According to the timetable, this trip takes 23 hours. In a way, I'm really sorry it leaves so late, because I would love to be able to see the familiar country around C'ville from the unfamiliar viewpoint of the train tracks. Goodness knows, when we lived there, we tresspassed on them enough times, but riding the actual train is different.

All week I've been reading voraciously about train travel -- what to take, what to expect, stories from other passengers. Now, in just a little over twelve hours, the fun will actually begin. Believe me, there will be further bulletins as events warrant.