The alarm on my BlackBerry was set for an hour before dawn so I could slink out of the room and catch the sunrise. I laid it next to my head and passed out on the floor of the hotel room on a pile of pillows and under a swath of blankets. When I woke, Jennifer was standing over me telling me my alarm had gone off.

No surprise I’d slept through it, we know I sleep like the dead. It worries me sometimes, but not this morning — this particular morning I was too excited to be worried. I failed to bring a baseball hat so it was only a clip that held my wild hair out of my eyes and looking somewhat tamed as I pulled on the clothes I’d worn the day before, grabbed my camera bag and tripod and scuttled out of the room.

Wandering through the French Quarter at 6am, I passed a number of bars still rocking strong with their music and voices wafting out into the streets and hovering in the neon. I crossed paths with a few pairs of folks still out from the night before, wearing beads though Mardi Gras expired a week prior…they clearly didn’t get the note from the fashion critics telling them beads were “out”.

Blocks were barricaded off while the early morning trash crew worked quietly on the city, removing boxes and boxes and wheeled carts of refuse from the sidewalks that represented only the last few hours. I’m struck by the fact that the refuse collection crews are constantly at work here - taking away the acrid decay of debauchery that smells remarkably - in invisible, unavoidable pockets - like vomit. (Note to self: look into a bar district recycling campaign for not only Atlanta, but New Orleans!)

What turned out to be five blocks away from the water I got turned around and found myself in dark streets with no bars and no pedestrians and while my tripod makes a fine weapon, I decided not to chance it and hailed a cab. I’d only been here once before, after all, and that was with a Hurricane and Captain & Coke or four in my belly. $2.40 later, I was at the water and the sun was rising. The sky was orange and there was a creepy yet romantic mist crawling up the bank of the Mississippi and onto the sidewalk.

I snapped a few shots before a man I’d noticed shortly after my arrival approached me, my right hand easing into my jeans pocket and on my spray. He asked if I could take his picture, explaining that it was his birthday and he’d left his camera behind in his hotel room. Because, he said; he was trying not to wake his wife.

Had it not been for him, I might not have any pictures from the trip that I really love.

When my time with the camera had been satisfied, I walked a quarter block to a barely populated Cafe Du Monde, grabbed a cafe au lait and a token bag of fresh beignets. Street artists were already setting up around the perimeter of Jackson Square, runners were out on the riverwalk, and I had a skip in my step. I tried to gobble it all up – the silence with murmurs of song, the ornate details in the architecture and their charming balconies, the perfect temperature of the air, the powdered sugar littering my sweater after only one bite and the prospect of another twenty four hours in the arms of this most haunted city.