A Good, Old Fashioned Carriage Ride: no turn on red
What better way to see New Orleans’ French Quarter than than on a horse drawn carriage ride? It harkens back to a simpler time in history, a time when Henry Ford hadn’t yet thought of that newfangled horseless buggy. The only thing is, if you take a ride, you’ll have to deal with all the modern technology N’awlins has now. Like, horseless buggies. I wonder if one of the steeds is named “Anachronism.”
I didn’t take a carriage ride when I was in New Orleans. I have taken one before, though, in New York City. My family and I, after eating at Tavern on the Green, chose to digest with a clip-clopping ride through Central Park. This was the mid-90s, right after Home Alone 2: Lost in New York came out. Well, it just so happened that our carriage driver was in the lesser-quality-but-still-highly-enjoyable sequel to Home Alone. There’s one scene–more like a five second shot–where Kevin hides in a basket on a carriage. Our driver was the guy that drove Kevin away! To a young kid (which I was, at the time), this was big time stuff. For a few glorious minutes, I was one degree away from Kevin McCallister, the kid that had a Talkboy tape recorder and ordered room service ice cream sundaes.
Perhaps deep down, I’ve never entered another carriage because I knew I would never top that New York ride. I flew too close to the sun.