The Honeymoon's Over, Kids

Evidentiary Support A: After two and a half weeks of beautiful weather, today is our second straight day of sogginess, quite literally raining on our parade, since rain = cancellation of the final and most revered of Holy Week processions.

Evidentiary Support B: Jay got visibly peeved at me today. (I emphasize "visibly" because it's very likely he's already been annoyed by me and I just didn't know. Or care to notice.)

Either way, I'd say 20 days ain't such a bad run.

Are you there God? It's me, Hungary.

I'm in Budapest right now, taking part in Hungary's St. Stephen's Day celebrations. Apparently the city is on high alert this year, after what happened in 2006:

"At least three people died and more than 250 were injured when a storm lashed Hungary's captial, Budapest, as huge crowds watched a firework display."

With three hours left to go until 2007's fireworks, Budapest is again currently under seige by heavy rains. Trees are toppling sideways and people have fled screaming for cover. The winds are so strong, I had to throw my body into my balcony door in order to close it. (For once, work has possibly saved my sanity. Earlier, I opted to go back to the hotel to work, instead of remaining on the large ship floating in the Danube that I'm supposed to be on right now.) I have to admit it's a little freaky.


Yesterday, during a guided tour, our guide stopped at the Holy Trinity Column, which was erected near the Royal Palace in 1713 to protect the city from the plague, which Budapest was repeatedly (forgive me) plagued with. "We don't have a lot of good luck here in Hungary," she said.

No kidding.

I'm about to get all Anderson Cooper on yo' asses

Here's a secret: Geographically, New York is not my first love. It's New Orleans, and if it wasn't so damn humid there the majority of the year, I would move tomorrow, taking up residence in some cute apartment on Decatur with those shuttered French windows that open to a tiny balcony that I'd fill with ferns and flowers and windchimes and voodoo dolls...

Anywho, I visited once in 2003 and on my recent trip back, I was determined to take a Katrina tour because I wanted to see the hurricane devastation for myself. The running consensus seems to be that the tourist areas are fine (which they largely are) and that the Ninth Ward was completely wiped out (which it was), but that's where all the poor people lived anyway, so who cares?! Get over it New Orleans! Mother Nature did you a favor! (At least this is what my republican cousins say.)

What I don't think many people realize is that most of the places you saw on the news--people climbing to rooftops for safety, doors with morbid X markings on them--were largely in the suburban upper and middle class areas of Gentilly and Lakeside--places kids like you and me grew up in. So imagine your parents' house when you look through these photos, because the areas of Gentilly and Lakeside are where I took the majority of these pictures. (FYI, I was confined to a bus, so apologies for the less-than-stellar photography. Not that I'm usually Annie Leibovitz or anything.)

According to Joe Genduse, a tour guide with Grayline and native New Orleanian (he said things like "ageen" instead of "again"), 80 percent of the city was destroyed, with the French Quarter suffering mostly wind damage and with Gentilly, where Joe lived, losing the most people. "I stayed because I couldn't get out," he said. "Imagine trying to evacuate 1.5 million people. People who tried to evacuate sat in traffic for 24 hours to go 12 miles." So, he batted down the hatches.


Today, there are areas of Lakeview where there still is no electricity or water pressure. You can tell the areas where these utilities exist, Joe says, because handfuls of trailers will start popping up there. "It's the infrastructure of the city that is the most damaged," he said. Police, firemen and banks all operate out of trailers, some without bathrooms, forcing the use of portable toilets. (Check out The New York Times recent story, the first of a three-part series, about how residents are trying to re-establish areas like Gentilly.)

Looting still happens, so much so that people who can still live in their homes are forced to either hire security or spray paint "beware" signs on the side of their houses. As you can imagine, some houses are so damaged the owners don't even bother to drop a dollar on a "for sale" sign. Instead, they simply spray paint their phone number across the front of the house.

It's a completely eye-opening experience to take a tour like this and if you come to New Orleans--and I recommend you do--you absolutely should take one. It's been two years since the hurricane and people still talk about it like it happened yesterday. I think that's largely because the majority of the city is still in such dire straits. Visitors coming to New Orleans can only help speed the progression.

So enough with the doom and gloom--why do I love New Orleans so much? Well, at the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, there is just something so magical about it. I'm fascinated by the architecture, the cemeteries, the insanely friendly people who will still say hi to you even when you blatantly avoid looking them in the eye. My first night on my last visit there I was having dinner at an outside cafe when a man crossing the street got hit by a car (that's no small feat on the French Quarter's tiny streets, mind you). Everyone ran to him--not to gawk, but to make sure he was OK (he was). Now, I've also seen this happen in New York, and while people did stop to help, a good number kept right on walking.

But the thing I love most about New Orleans, was best summed up by the guy dining at the table next to me at dinner that same night, after his waiter placed his po'boy in front of him: "My god, I think they fry everything here but the Coca-Cola!"