Lower Mississippi Trip

Apr 28 - May 9, 2022

It is so nice and quiet in the hotel that makes me think it will be the same inside the air terminal.
We walk into the air terminal at 5 a.m. and find it literally jammed with people and noise. People are everywhere and formed into long snaking lines with no indication as to what the line is for! We just have to ask someone in line. It is the security check line but what we first have to do is find the computers so we can print out our flight tickets and check our suitcases. We do this fairly quickly and then start to walk back and back and back to the start of the security line. I guess I look wearied and frustrated and handicapped carrying my walking sticks with me because an uniformed woman looks at me and says with authority, "Follow me!" She leads us both to a detour line so we can bypass the security line and go straight to the head of the line! Talk about angels! She was it.

We check through quickly and find our departure gate. The flight is full and the shades drawn down. The entire flight to Miami, I never see the outside of the plane. In Miami this time a man looks at me and asks what gate we are using for our connecting flight. He loads us into a golf cart and when it is full he takes us clear to the other end of the big terminal to our gate! It is a scary ride because the golf cart is silent and the driver comes up from behind startling the people who are walking. They have to kind of jump out of the way.

The flight to New Orleans is fine and this time we sit next to a window with a view! It is a bright sunny day. At the airport in New Orleans we walk to the baggage area slowly...so slowly that by the time we get to the baggage claim all the suitcases were claimed and ours are not in sight! Al quickly finds where our bags are being held and soon we are in a taxi covering the miles to Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

This is a beautiful famous old section of New Orleans and the city looks beautiful. We check in and then find the meeting room where Road Scholar members are seated and signing registration papers. There are 28 of us and we each stood up and introduced ourselves. All very friendly folks...older folks like me and Al. The woman I sit next to tells me this is her 54th Road Scholar trip!! 54. We then move downstairs to another meeting room, the Riverview Room, where we have a delicious served dinner of chicken and rice with asparagus and carrots. We are entertained by a trio of instrumentalists, one plays a clarinet, one a banjo and one a bass. They play and sing throughout our dinner and beyond. Louis Armstrong songs and others. I find myself singing along to Hello Dolly and It's a Wonderful World and others. We are back in our room tired and ready for bed. Wait! What's this?! I hear the sounds of a band and people singing and parading past our hotel! I hear they do that a lot in the French Quarter.

About the lobby clock - it's tall, it's impressive, and the carvings on the front and two sides are beautiful. But the movement doesn't seem to fit. Pendulum comes down to my shoulder (should be longer) and the chimes are rods rather than tubes. I suspect that the movement is a transplant.

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