I dreamed that New Orleans had a reasonably sized Chinatown centered at Canal and Dauphine, and an equivalent Japanese ethnic center around Canal and Basin. On the edges of these they'd build a Chinese courtesan house and a Geisha tea house, respectively, in competition with each other. The tea house had a Wild West theme, and was actually a front for the Japanese mafia. I was trying to drive home by turning left at the courtesan house, but I kept getting detoured to go by the tea house instead, so I got out of my car to walk.
I found myself Uptown somehow, looking down a steep hill at an enormous park. Thick jade green grass sprang up in the shade of huge old oak trees, and almost the entire park was covered by an elaborate, brightly colored jungle gym. I needed to cross down into the valley and up the equally steep banks on the other side, and the quickest way to do this was by a path that led through the jungle gym. So, to the confusion of two little boys playing by themselves to my left, I stepped down onto the path and climbed my way across.
The path let out into a long science lab, set up in a long landing over a basketball arena. I was very confused about where I was at this point, and I asked a lab tech working at a bench to my left which university this was. He said it was Loyola. But I could see the buildings of the CBD when I looked out the sky lights, so that didn't seem right. But he said no, this was the Lower Garden campus, not the Uptown campus. Only I could still also see Tulane buildings out the window. But it didn't really matter, because since I could see the CBD, I knew my way home.
I wound my way past the basketball stadium into a wide hall that looked like a really fancy corporate office building lobby, except for the ornately carved gothic cathedral entrance in one corner. I could hear mass being said inside. I met up with my friend Tanya, and we went out the doors, only to find that instead of streets and buildings, the campus let out on this side right onto the banks of the Mississippi.
Here they had built elevated walkways and arcades out of stone, and these seemed to hover ghostly in the thick wreathes of mist that rose from the river. There were little flat boats with poles, and it all seemed very medieval English. We wandered transfixed up the covered walkways, staring down into the dark water beneath. We wound our way back to the main foyer, past little shops and coffee houses.
When we got back to the lobby, they had set up an absolutely free lunch buffet. We grabbed plates and piled them high with cookies, hot dogs, and carved turkey and ham. We went back a few times. Tanya started telling me about a book she wanted to write, loosely based on her relationship with her mother. She described a moving and climactic ending scene to the first part, where the mother in the story, an avid ice hockey player, is in the middle of a big game when the river ice cracks beneath her, and she's being pulled under by the current. Her daughter rushes out onto the ice to grab her hand, but the scene ended on a cliffhanger, and I didn't know if the mother was pulled to safety or not, and then I wondered how much of that was real, and if Tanya had lost her mother to a skating accident, but I didn't like to ask.
Since we were finished eating, we decided to head out. When we left the lobby this time, we found ourselves on the San Antonio River Walk, at the corner of St. Ann and St. Philip Streets. I could look down from the top of the stairs and see the river and the stone bridges over it. I called my mom to find out if she could drive us home, since it was getting close to time for her to get off of work. She said sure, but we'd have to give her a half hour or so. I asked how we should get to her parking garage from where we were. She said we could start off either way, as long as we were heading towards down town, so we began to walk up St. Philip while she thought of how to direct us.
We had to walk through a maze of parking garages that wanted to charge us just to walk in, but we managed to avoid that, and finally Mom told us just to wait where we were, which was a bus stop just off of I-10, and she'd come get us from there. Then I woke up.
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