Well…I won’t even begin to tell you how overdue this post is – damn life. This summer, hubby and I walked on over to The Bombay Club to visit someone we are big fans of, Cheryl Charming aka Miss Charming. And what we got…was the “Miss Charming Experience.” First off, let’s talk about the Bombay Club. It is a very charming (pun intended) bar, nestled in the French Quarter on 830 Conti Street (a little off our usual bar crawl route). Not sure if this is an insult or not…but the bar kind of reminds me of a classy, upscale Cheers with quiet dinners being enjoyed off to the side with a beautiful wood bar dominating the room. Hanging over the bar are an assortment of vintage glasses that Cheryl has acquired since she came on board. We cozied up to the bar after a big hug from Cheryl and were presented with the newly designed cocktail menus she created. I went for the froofy Wedding Cake Tini, while hubby stuck to his Abita Amber. Yes…the drink was as amazing as it looks!!!.

So what else is in the Miss Charming experience? Glad you asked. She has never met a stranger and we were quickly introduced to those around us. If we looked anti-social I am sure she would have understood that and left us alone. But she got that we were out for a good social time..it is NOLA after all! She then broke out the iPad bar trivia app that she created. Hubby always enjoys trivia, so was thoroughly entertained by playing even though he failed at it miserably! Then it was picture time: pictures of me with her that she put on Facebook (she always puts them there) and pictures with the Marilyn Monroe cutout making rounds throughout the club.
Cheryl is also a great magician and knows every bar trick in the book (I think she wrote that book too – she wrote so many) so she could go on for hours to entertain you. Ohhh…then there was the prize she gave me. She makes the cutest rings and let me pick a number and choose a prize. Who doesn’t love prizes?

Having been to The Bombay Club only once before with a group of people (we sat in an adjoining room), I feel comfortable you that this place is worth a stop. There is usually live music, energy for those looking for it or opportunities to sit quietly. Next on our list is to dine there as we hear the food is very good. Miss Charming does not work every night…but if you get lucky enough to hit the place when she is there – enjoy! Hubby left saying, “Cheryl really made that place a lot of fun. You can just go to a bar or you can be entertained by all her little quirky things that really made going there an extra good time.”

This is our 5th Mardi Gras season in the New Orleans area. Along with the traditional holiday and seasonal decorations, I now have a small collection of bows and baubles for Mardi Gras. I love driving around New Orleans and/or walking through the French Quarter and seeing all the effort people put into Mardi Gras. Balconies, doorways, windows, porches…all beautiful. Here are a couple of pictures from Dumaine Street in the French Quarter.

I get lots of emails from people visiting from out of town, asking what they should do while they are here. It is always tough to pin that down as everyone is so different. We have lived here for 3 years now and I still have a huge bucket list of things I have not done and places I want to eat and drink. This post will just tell you about some things my husband and I did during a 24 hour visit to the Quarter.

Hotel Monteleone: @hotelmonteleone Here is my review of the hotel stay. It was amazing!

Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone: @carouselbar Marv, the day bartender for the Carousel Bar is one of my favorite New Orleans personalities. He was not there when we arrived, but Mike took very good care of us. I had a Sidecar and hubby had a dirty martini while our friends enjoyed Sazeracs and a variety of other drinks.

Antoine’s Restaurant: See review here.

Hermes Bar at Antoine’s Restaurant: I love this bar. It was my second time there and my first time with live entertainment. We really enjoyed ourselves, but the temperature dropped a bit and the doors were all open, so we headed out earlier than we normally would have for our next destination.

Old Absinthe House: This place is always great! We got a seat next to the fireplace and we all really enjoyed the background music there. I was pacing myself, otherwise wouldl have ordered the Irish Coffee. Our friends loves their Frappes and everyone else went for beer.

Davenport Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton : Our friends love ending their evenings in the French Quarter listening to Jeremy Davenport and having a bottle of champagne. WOW, this was our first time doing that and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Jeremy and his bad are fantastic and very entertaining. I hit the dance floor once and would have more if asked. Our group ordered champagne, but I was on the only water diet by then. Daniel Victory, a wonderful guy and famous bartender at the Ritz was there of course. Good to see him and I give him a smooch. Lights were out there about 1:30 and it was daylight savings, so time to head back to the hotel.

Lucky Dogs: Hubby’s French Quarter tradition is to get a chili dog with onions on the way home. I’m grossed out by the whole thing, but he loves it!

Cafe’ Fleur De Lis: Marv (the bartender) gave us a couple of suggestions for a non-brunch breakfast. This is now my new favorite diner in the Quarter. It is a little crazy there. You wait in line and do not get a table until you order. Everything is pretty well times down to a science and after you order, there is a table available. We laughed when we saw people getting scolded for breaking protocol. We almost did, but realized when a table came available that everyone in line just stood there. The spinach and feta cheese omelet was to die for and hubby got a traditional breakfast.

The French Quarter: Since it was about 70 degrees out, hubby and I were anxious to stroll through the Quarter before our return home. I really had the itch to clothes and shoe shop, but he was not going to have it. So we settled for walking hand in hand down Chartres to Jackson Square, seeing all the artwork and interesting people and walking back on Royal to check out.

Overall, the perfect getaway. Wouldn’t have changed a thing!

And Mama needs botox for Xmas! Damn – nothing worse!

This Time article compares the safety of the 2 locations. In fact the safety was compared back during Mardi Gras. I’d write more, but I have to run to the studio in the French Quarter by the scene of a murder of a great lady committed by a group of teens. I still love this city and won’t leave. Let’s FIX the problem! Talk amongst yourselves..must run……

@kissmygumbo in case you want to follow me!

I’ve been on Twitter for quite some time now and hit the 1500 follower mark yesterday (I is soooo special). Why do I use Twitter (d’uh I’m a web geek and have to try everything new)? Well…the first thing that appealed to me was the New Orleans community. I could ask about a restaurant and in a matter of 20 seconds, have 10 opinions about whether to wear jeans or a skirt to it. I could be in the French Quarter and find out that someone else was there and meet up with them for coffee. It really was a handy social tool for me and helped me get to know people in the area better. Most of the first local Twitterers were also bloggers (no surprise there). At this point I kept my politics off Twitter and swore to only use it for social stuff because many of the locals have opposing views with me. We have even had 2 NOLA Tweetups that I attended (there have been more), where we all got together. So what happened next? How did I get further sucked into this time-wasting vacuum? The Tweetdeck application on my laptop and Twitterfon application from my iPhone starting making this Twitter thing very handy (curse them both now).

So there is this wonderful NOLA community, easy applications and then my Twitter world got carried away from there. If you tweet a bunch and give decent tweets (not just being a self-promoting whore) people start to follow you. Some followers are businesses I could care less about and some are interesting people and hey…this is fun. Next cames the whole Top Conservatives on Twitter craze…shoot…now mixing politics on Twitter…did not want to go there at all. I barely made it through Twitter during the elections and actually stayed away from it a bit then. I’m weak and gave into temptation and before I knew it, I’m sucked into the world of politics on Twitter – UGH!!! Getting deeper and deeper…. By now you all know about my involvement with Soldiers’ Angels. We have 1,000 soldiers waiting for adoption – tweet it – and bam…people Retweet (repeat my tweet to their followers) and the word gets out to their followers (thousands of people get my message in a few seconds). Shoot – this thing works pretty darn good. Going on air live in 2 minutes, Tweet about it and take live tweets during the show – OMG this works too!

Lat week I threw out my idea to my friend JP from Milblogging.com (who was a little late to the Twitter party, but in a matter of 3 weeks has 15,000 followers) that I want to draw attention to the military on Twitter (each armed force even has a Twitter account). #Milmonday was born yesterday and I would say it was a success (and the military crowd goes wild). Now, 15,000 would be a nice amount of followers to pimp a blog post or my radio show, but I really like my followers and like to converse with them. When you get to numbers in the 1,000 – what is the chance that person will know who the heck you are? This rule does not apply to celebrities who have a gazillion followers and for the most part don’t give a rat’s ass who is following them. We are there to here their profound Tweets (snark inserted here). Anyhoo…Twitter is cool and I get to meet lots of people and hey kids “everyone is doing it!”

” Here is my Twitter 101 post for those considering on wasting hours of your life.

h/t

h/t for video Kerri

By now you all know how in love I am with New Orleans and all it has to offer. Over the past 2 years, we’ve only spent one overnight in the French Quarter and this weekend hubby planned a second one. We stayed at the beautiful Ritz Carlton on Canal Street. They give a wonderful military discount Hooah! and are first class all the way! Lookie what was brought to my room (big awwwww)

Then we were off to Arnaud’s for dinner and drinks. Thanks to Mrs. Cocktail for helping me decide by text message what drinks I should request. She said to either get the French 75 or to trust anything Chris, a bartender she thinks very highly of, made for me. Chris decided to surprise me by whipping up a Brandy Smash (skipped wine and had 3 of them). Maybe that is why I am hungover…or is it all the Abita Ambers that followed? Hmmmmm

Hubby selected the room that had the Jazz trio playing and we faced Bourbon Street. Bonus…we also got to watch the Italian-American St. Joseph Parade go by in the rain.

Below is Shrimp Arnaud and Turtle Soup that hubby ordered and yours truly sampled. They were both magnificent but turtles are so cute and eating them makes me feel awful.

I ordered the Pontchartrain fish, which was red fish and the Souffle’ Potatoes. You bet – they were both mouthwatering!

Afterwards, we headed down Bourbon where the post-parade atmosphere was absolutely electric! We parked it atPat O’Briens for the night and met all types of wonderful people out having a wonderful time .

The picture below shows: my dirty shoes, garters placed on me by 2 different guys (1st guy spilled his drink down my leg), beads thrown from balconies or exchanged for kisses, lucky fava beans placed in my pocket by men. Not shown – bouquet of plastic flowers earned from kissing men left on the bar (on purpose) at Pat O’s. Yes, I was with my hubby the whole time – all innocent and traditional fun.

Update: AM 690 WIST (central)
call in numbers 800-888-WIST (504)260-0690

3:00- 3:30 I will be interviewing FBI Special Agent Robert Basanez and we will cover as time allows
* What’s the deal with Social Networking and child predators?
* Can your online activity come back to haunt you?
* What’s this new form of “bullying” in schools called “Cyber Bullying”?
* How can we keep our kids safe while online?
* Tips and resources for parents?

3:30-4:00 I will be interviewing Kevin Farley, the lead (WOOT WOOT) of the movie The American Carol

The kids go back to school on the 8th – woot woot. I mean, I will just cry and cry all day *sniff sniff* (evil laugh inserted here)!!! Anyhoo, my parents are here this last week of vacation. We have been busy doing all kinds of touristy stuff and going out to eat (yay – no cooking for me). Thought I’d give you a little roundup of what’s we’ve been up to.

The Satchmo Festival was fantabulous. Sherm (my dad), was in heaven after listening to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (he was a musician). He said that was one of the best bands he had ever heard (remember – he is selectively deaf & only can’t hear my mother). He couldn’t stop smiling and talking about it all the way home! Walter Payton singing and dancing to “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” was my favorite part!

I got a whole bunch of boxes mailed off overseas to soldiers this week – phew. Let me know if you want to do anything to support the troops – I can help!

El Whoppo was sighted by our boat at the Honey Island Swamp Tour today. My parents and family thoroughly enjoyed it and Charlie out captain/guide was great!

Insta-Gator Ranch was a great take for a rainy afternoon. From 7-79 – everyone enjoyed it!

We’ve also filled our tummies at Crazy Johnnie’s, Times Grill in Slidell and Copeland’s in Metairie. YUM!!!