John and Kathi in New Orleans: Part I

I took a big step this week in my recovery from the double blow of my wife's death and my own heart surgery. I flew down to New Orleans with my new friend Kathi to spend Halloween weekend having as much fun as possible. This was the first thing I have looked forward to since Lisa's death, and it was everything I hoped. Kathi is on her own journey back from losing her husband, and we seem to have found something good together.

Hotel Mazarin Courtyard

We stayed at the Hotel Mazarin in the French Quarter. The hotel was fine, and I just loved the Quarter. It looked and felt different from anywhere else I have been: different architecture, different tacky stores, different cultural memes.

Friday night we took a mule-drawn carriage ghost/vampire tour, which was fun; New Orleans has lots of creepy stories with various degrees of veracity. Of course the tour goes by the Lalaurie Mansion, where Delphine Lalaurie really chained and tortured slaves in the 1820s before the story grew into a famous American nightmare. Our guide had us take photos of the entrance, which he then intrpreted as images of skulls and ghosts. This photo of mine shows "a shadow man." Like I said, it was fun.

We spent much of Saturday walking around, soaking it in. 

I very much enjoyed the Voodoo Museum, which is tiny but has cool exhibits focusing on noted practitioners from the mid 1800s to the 1970s. Not just, ooo, Voodoo is badass, but the careers of real people who got into the practice in different ways and took it in different directions.

I love this accidental photo of Kathi as the spirit behind the mirror. 

Our costumes for Halloween. I love this picture of Kathi because she often has this expression, like she expects that something good is about to happen.

We read that on Halloween the French Quarter is one big costume party, and it is. The atmosphere was really fun, and neither Kathi nor I drinks much, so isn't just that. We danced at a little party in our hotel and then walked through the street party to the vampire ball. The highlight of that for me was actually the line going in, seeing 200 or so people in fabulous costumes – we were middling for this crowd – and chatting with folks from all over the US and beyond. But once it got going the music was too loud for conversation and not very danceable, so we eventually wandered back to our hotel for the end of that party, dancing until our feet gave out. It was the best Halloween for me since that awful day more than a decade ago when my youngest child told me she was trick-or-treating with her friends and didn't want me to come along.

More to come.