Peggy Scott moved into our neighborhood in 2007 and she literally changed our little section of Beacon Hill. She made friends with everyone and introduced us all to each other making it a much friendlier and loving neighborhood. Since selling our home in 2020 she has opened her home, heart and auto to us. We have our own lovely suite and she allows us free rein to host parties with our Boston friends and the use of her car whenever we need. She is the best friend anyone could ask for.
We have also traveled fairly extensively with Peggy and other mutual friends. We have been to Istanbul, Scotland and Paris prior to our retirement. Peggy helped us pick our Paris apartment that we lived four months in back in 2017. Since our retirement travel she has visited us in Prague, Madrid and now New Orleans. The really great thing about her visit is that she is overlapping a few hours with our mutual friends Dick and Andrew on one end and Sigi and Paul on the other end.
Yay Peggy is here!Getting to spend a few hours together. Jim is wearing a mask as he is just recovering from a mild case of covid. Fortunately no-one else got infected during their stays with us.We had a 2pm reservation at Dooky Chase restaurant before the boys fly out at 6pm. We enjoyed the experience but it will probably be a one and done restaurant unless someone else really wants to go there.Going directly from the restaurant to the airport.After a lovely lunch at Dooky Chase with Dick and Andrew we bid them goodbye and took Peggy to Congo Square and Louis Armstrong Park.This beautiful park just steps from the French quarter honors the jazz great Louis Armstrong. Louis had a very troubled childhood growing up in a high crime neighborhood. His father left home and Louis had to drop out of school after 5th grade to help support his mother and sister. His latest in a series of stepfathers had a gun and on New Years Day 1912 at the age of 11 he took his stepfather’s 38 pistol to impress his friends. When gunfire sounded from down the street his friends urged him to return fire which he did, firing a shot in the air. Shortly after he was in police custody and sent to a reform school called the The Colored Waifs Home for boys. It was here that he learned how to play many musical instruments but eventually his best talent was on the trumpet. He eventually became one of the finest jazz musicians in the world, after trading a gun for a trumpet. In the southern corner of Armstrong Park is Congo Square, an open space where the enslaved and free people of color gathered throughout the 19th century for meetings, open markets, and the African dance and drumming celebrations that played a substantial role in the development of of jazz.
The park has many great sculptures and beautiful ponds. Jim photo bombed Peggy’s picture in front of this great sculpture in Armstrong Park.
From the Park we walked to the French Quarter so she could experience all it has to offer. She really enjoyed the vibe. Here she is with Jim in front of Preservation Hall where we have tickets to a show later in the week.On a very cold, cloudy, raw day Sandy booked a tour for her and Peggy of the Garden District neighborhood. Our tour guide with multiple ear nose and lip rings (zoom in) had long greasy hair and a wool coat covered in dog hair. His name was Toast which he told us was the legal name his mother gave him. He had an unusual nasal inflection in his speech and had us stand for extended periods of time giving us painfully long and extraneous info about architecture and flora. I think the look on the face of the guy in the brown jacket sums up how we all felt about the tour. Peggy did get to see some celebrity houses in the neighborhood and being a football fan it was a treat for her to see Archie Manning’s house where Peyton and Eli grew up.Peggy enjoyed the cajun cuisine at the restaurants in our neighborhood. This is Lilette which is a French and Italian take on New Orleans cuisine.Sandy wanted Peggy to see an Urban Mansion so she brought her on a tour of the Gallier House in the French Quarter.This is a restored 19th century greek revival historic house museum. It was originally the home of James Gallier Jr who was a prominent architect in New Orleans.Despite it being 1860 they had a copper bath tub, and ceramic toilet.Beautiful dining room with lovely china. The slaves were not allowed to wash the china as often times the slaves would in a rebellious mood purposely break the china so the family would have to purchase a whole new set of dishes. It was hard for the family to prove it was not a true accident so to solve the problem the family did their own dishes.The Gallier’s had three daughters who slept in this room together.This is where Mrs Gallier would entertain her female friends. It was her “day bedroom”Mr Gallier’s home office in the upper hallway. He designed that each room on the second floor opened up to one another so all doors surrounding his office could close as to not disturb him but still enabled to move about the rooms.These stairs take you to Crescent Park. This 1.4 mile park is part of the French Market District and connects the community and visitors to the riverfront. As you can see it offers amazing views.Esplanade Avenue once functioned as “millionaires row”. In the 19th century it was an important portage route of trade between the Bayou St John, which linked to Lake Pontchartrain, and the Mississippi River. Many colorful homes line the street. Although not obvious the last home to the right in the photo is listing to the right.We saw this vintage car parked on Esplanade, apparently still functioning as it had plates.Jim’s nephew Jonathan is a pilot for Southwest Airlines and often books his flights to visit us, be it in Boston or other US cities. We were excited to spend the day with him on his lay over in New Orleans. He joined us and Peggy for lunch at Degas Restaurant. Peggy knows Jonathan from his visits to us in Boston and has even hosted friends of his at her house. Jon also visited us in Madrid with his twins last spring. We did a quick walk through the Sculpture Garden in City park.The end of Peggy’s visit also overlapped with our mutual friends Sigi and Paul from London that she connected us to when we first moved to London in 2018. This is only the second time we have all been physically together. The first time was last spring in Madrid.Here we are back at the same table at Cafe Degas where we had lunch with Jonathan the day before.Friends sharing friends has been a common denominator of our lives and has enriched us in so many ways. Thank you Peggy for sharing Sigi and Paul and Judith and Anthony with us. What amazing memories we have shared and more to come as we reunite in the Sicily Islands of England in May. Preservation Hall concert with us and Sigi and Paul was a perfect wrap up to Peggy’s visit.Peggy just loved the Preservation Hall experience.We took the New Orleans street car home from our night at Preservation hall.Bye Bye dear Peggy. You are a jewel of a friend and have given us so much joy in our life.
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