2 days in Richmond

3 days in Philadelphia
5 days in San Jose (3 midterms-- that wasn't very fun)
4 days in New Orleans
That about wraps up my interview season. No love from my November NY interviews though- one rejection and one waitlist. Sad face. Desperation.
After posting pictures (complete with historical/architectural commentary!) on Facebook (which you should totally take a look at because they're awesome and completely from my camera phone, so holler and I'll hook you up with a link, because gangsters are so generous like that), I am in no mood to recap my Richmond/Philly trip. But I MUST talk about New Orleans:
TOP THREE THINGS I LEARNED IN NEW ORLEANS:
1. Never EVER underestimate football in the South
Walking back to my hotel after my interview, I saw an elderly woman in the street dressed really elegantly, like the queen of England. When she turned around I saw that she was wearing a black and gold Saints jersey under her powder blue Chanel jacket. Likewise, the Brooks Brothers store on Canal Street featured a floor-to-ceiling banner that read, in five-foot letters, "WHO DAT!"
2. Centering your entire wardrobe around cute waist-belts is a HUGE mistake

My dad saw something in a New Orleans travel guide that we adopted as our vacation motto: Eat Until You Die. So even though my tiny stomach was begging me to stop, my mouth was saying, "Dude, you're never going to eat food this good again. Wolf it down, brah. Then order the crème brulée."
The seafood was phenomenal, there's no doubt about that. Oysters, dungeness crab, coriander and pepper-crusted tuna, sautéed fish Beurre Noisette. Mmmmmm. I was however, surprised to find two new "bests" in other culinary genres.
The Best Pasta, aka Superdome Seafood PastaI'm not a fan of pasta. I don't like onions or green peppers. But this pasta, that the chef made spontaneously on the spot JUST FOR ME, combined things I don't love (vegetables, esp. onions) with things I DO love (shrimp, crawfish, andouille) and some other magical ingredients (amazing cheesy cajun sauce, which my lactose-intolerant digestive system paid heavily for afterwards) to create THE BEST PASTA I'VE EVER HAD.The Best Hollandaise Sauce, aka Breaux Bridge BenedictMy friend Nathan and I have talked about our long pursuit of the best eggs benedict, which is of course primarily dependent on the hollandaise sauce. I am proud to announce that I HAVE FOUND IT.French baguette, American cheese, pork boudin, perfectly poached eggs, heavenly hollandaise, and smoked ham. I would have been perfectly satisfied in life if, two minutes after having consumed this, a coked-out hick shot me in the face with a sawed-off shotgun and harvested my organs with a biodegradable knife (100% corn starch!) to exchange for drugs on the black market. It was that good.
So it would be a ginormous understatement to say that restricting your midsection with a waist-belt in New Orleans is a 'bad idea.'
3. If you don't want your mother to be mooned by a shitfaced Southerner with a Saints helmet tattooed on his ass, do not take her to Bourbon Street past 9 pm. Better yet, do not take her to Bourbon Street past 2 pm.
I only have one thing to say regarding this matter: New Orleans makes Las Vegas look like an Amish settlement.
In other words, if you've never been, you need to fucking go.


