If you go to New Orleans neighborhood you must visit the oldest and most romantic of all, the French Quarter.
In these streets , jazz was born, Is celebrate one of the most famous carnival, and modern novels say that at night there vampires walking.
The professor longhair says "Yes I'm goin 'to New Orleans I wanna see the Mardi Gras hen I see the Mardi Gras I wanna know what's carnival for".
A carnival that ends on Tuesday (mardi) prior to Ash Wednesday, they call Fat Tuesday, because for Christians is the last day they can eat fatty meat.
The houses in the neighborhood are painted in brilliant colors and the Mississippi River is right there waiting for you to Skipping stones, at least that's what I do when I have a river nearby.
By that river down the barrels of corn and rye whiskey that ships loaded in Bourbon County in Kentucky, so today we called Bourbon the American whiskey.
There's even a Rue Bourbon where I love to to get a photo, with bottle in my hand.
The city grew at the end of the Mississippi Delta and many legends abound, the traces of voodoo and African traditions are still common.
The carnival queen is called Zulu Queen. and the king, Zulu King.
On this city of colorful houses, lived Antoine Amedee Peychaud, an apothecary creator of bitter aniseed and red that bears his name.
And with this bitter sugar few drops of absinthe. and French cognac "Sazerac Forge et Fils" was born the variation of the old fashioned drink that is emblematic of New Orleans.
Also this city has, the only museum that I really like to visit "the museum of the American Cocktail" http://www.museumoftheamericancocktail.org/
Bad bartender, who never dreamed , to listen to jazz while sipping a Sazerac a warm night of carnival.
And I an Argentine bartender many times dreamed myself walking in these streets , where the mysterious Dr. Colley, invented Hesperidina, the most emblematic bottle of my country.
But sometimes is not so easy to travel in real life as in the imagination.
Luckily I live in a beautiful city that is at the end of a river delta as well.
Although Buenos Aires has an old and colorful neighborhood, where there once was a port.
Where the Brook is close to Skipping Stones.
And where thousands of immigrants brought grappa and Fernet Branca.
And my city also has a carnival, and a neighborhood full of colorful stories of African immigrants in the colony, and later Europeans, no Sazerac available here, but there is "vermouth and soda" and tangos that speak of absinthe.
And no French Quarter here but are some French grandmothers who never returned because they fell in love with this country.
And walking down the old and humble neighborhood of "La Boca" I think ... "if Carancanfunfa took the sea with your flag and in a glass of Pernod mixed Paris and Puente Alsina "
As sings the tango "el choclo"
Maybe this Cantinero with a Sazerac in one hand ,can confuse La Boca with the French Quarter next Friday July 27, when a couple of argentina's bartenders and an Italian friend, count the Americans gathered in New Orelans, that talking about cocktails the South also exists.
My friends there and I here far away accompanied by some of my padawan, making an smiling toast for to those who travel and those who stay in Argentina.
Although I like to think romantically a bit of my soul travels as well.
And even that day when I take the train from Florida to Buenos Aires I be able to dream that actually took another train, a train traveling from Chicago to New Orelans.
May the Cocktail be with You.
* Martin Auzmendi twitter: @ martinauz & Carlo Maria Contini ( headbartender in the cuban cigar bar. Prado and Neptune) and Myself Federico Cuco were invited to give a seminar at the tenth edition of "Tales of The Cocktail" the most important event of cocktails world.
It is the first time that Argentinians are invited to participate.
Unfortunately (for me) the U.S. government would not have given me the visa, and chances are few that ever happens, this note was only to get me ot the sadness.
But it happened, I'm just a bartender and even would have been nice to meet people who only know from his books and trajectories.
Fate and God know why I need to stay here.
And I hope that Martin Skipping stones in the Mississippi River for me.
