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Gerard's Travels
I don't want it to appear like a pattern is being established here by declaring that yet again today we slept in. We did. But we didn't get in till 3am, so we needed it, and given we had to relocate to our originally planned hotel this morning, we weren't in any rush; we wanted to make the most of this place. When we did get up, we packed our stuff up (which didn't take long seeing as we only checked in about 8 hours ago), checked out, and caught a taxi back to the Astor Crowne where we were supposed to be staying. At our expense. ****ers. It was hard to be mad at the hotel staff though (and we certainly weren't), thanks to the legendary good ol' fashioned Southern hospitality y'all. Unfortunately our room wasn't ready, which is no surprise really given they didn't even have a room for us just a few hours ago, so to even have a room available but not ready was progress. Yay! Fortunately they let us store our bags, and were going to call us when the room was ready until they realised they'd have to call an international number. Tight *****. Not that it mattered anyway, because we'd planned our day knowing we wouldn't get into our hotel straight away, and I packed my backpack accordingly (like making sure all the heavy books we carried around for the plane were out of my backpack and into the stored bag, that I had the camera with me etc). By now we were the consummate travellers. Usually when I get to a new place, I like to do a bit of a perimeter walk around the downtown (or CBD, but by now I'm getting the local lingo), generally to the main shopping area, and if there's a river or water at all, I almost always incorporate that into the walk, to get my bearings at the new place. Today was no exception. Stace and I set off from the hotel and headed down the street to where I knew the mighty Mississippi River was. Our hotel was located on Canal Street, right on the border of the French quarter of New Orleans. The French Quarter was the first area to settle in the city, way back when the area was obviously occupied by, you guessed it, the French. As the city expanded after the French occupation, it developed differently, and so now what is left behind is a gorgeous, quaint central area of the city with a complete different look and feel to the rest of the city, one with a decidedly European feel to it. After about 10 minutes of walking down Canal Street, we did indeed reach the bank of the Mississippi River. My navigation legend grew even more. The river would've been about 600 metres wide here, so it really was mighty. A bit upstream, which was further into the French Quarter, we could see a big steamboat, so headed in that direction. As we got closer we could see it was the Steamboat Natchez, which doesn't really mean anything to me, but the fact it may have been named after the same Mexican bloke that invented nachos. Nachos are delicious, so I hoped so. Though with Donald Trump wanting to rid the States of Mexicans, I didn't like the fate of the vessel should he win the U.S elections, and probably the fate of the world either. But let's not get political. The steamboat was preparing to set sail (maybe even set steam?) on a tourist cruise, so it was pretty action packed at the dock, and as it did head off, it was pretty impressive seeing the big paddles at the back slowly push it through the water. Just down the street from the dock, we found a little Southern restaurant that was serving breaky, which we were in need of. We grabbed a table outside - in the shade because it was already pretty hot and I would've burnt otherwise - and ordered some food. While Stace got some bacon and eggs, I decided to be a bit experimental and I ordered a Southern breakfast of grits and greoles, not having the slightest idea of what it was. We also ordered coffee. Stace tried to order a latte but the waitress had no idea what she was banging on about - we were in the South now - so we ended up with percolated coffee, which wasn't all that bad. My breakfast was different, but really good! It was made up of fine slices of tender veal in a thick brown sauce, almost like a slow cooked casserole, and grits, which was a bit of a cross between porridge and quinoa. I had no idea if you were supposed to put something savoury on it, or something sweet on it, or indeed anything at all, but it did soak up the veal beautifully and it was a satisfying breakky. After paying our bill we moved on, now being pretty close to the centre of the French Quarter. In fact, it was only a couple of minutes walk until we were in the centre, at Jackson Square. The square is bordered by three other roads, all closed to traffic, and at the top of it is the St Louis Cathedral. We walked around the square, which was characterised by lots of people trying to flog off their merchandise, and ended up inside the cathedral. You could tell how European influenced this place was by the cathedral, its inside looked exactly like any number of churches from Europe. Afterwards, we walked through the centre of the square, which had statues, water features, shade, grass and homeless people, and made really quite a pretty city centre. Apart from the homeless people. Eventually we made our way onto Decatur Street, which is the main street running parallel to the river in the French Quarter. We were keen to do a couple of tours while we were in New Orleans so we found a little corner shop that had tourist information, having unwittingly bypassed the massive tourist information shelter near Jackson Square. Oops. It didn't matter, because the lady in the shop was lovely, and gave us plenty of information and options to do some tours. She even gave us her mobile number in case we wanted to book. Lucky we have this thing called the Internet though, which means we can pretty much bypass that and book it all online ourselves. Yay for the Internet. Speaking of Internet, we were sort've having some withdrawals from wifi, which is pretty common, but even more common was Stace's need to wee, so with this in mind (and the fact it was hot), we found a bar in a nice old building, with an even nicer balcony looking over the streets, to have a break. Stace went to the toilet and I ordered some drinks, and went and sat on the balcony. The wifi didn't work, but that didn't matter in the end because Stace and I were pretty entertained by the homeless people on the other side of the road, a couple of whom were trying to make out, and the rest of whom were drinking and smashing bottles. Once we'd had a couple of beers, we'd seen enough of The Homeless Days of our Lives, so moved on. We found the French Market (which despite its name does not specialise in French stuff, just the run-of-the-mill market stuff) stretched out in the same direction we were wanting to go, so we wandered through it. We were heading (or so we hoped) in the general direction of Frenchmen Street, which we'd been told is an amazing place to see live jazz. New Orleans is a music city, regarded as the birthplace of modern jazz, and because of this it has a heap of jazz clubs and music venues. Perhaps the most famous is Bourbon Street, which we are going to go to eventually, but we were given a recommendation to head to Frenchmen Street, which has apparently retained a lot more of a local following, as opposed to Bourbon Street which is very much the tourist scene now. Frenchmen Street didn't disappoint. As soon as we got to it, there were live jazz music venues and bars in a sweet street setting that immediately oozed that this was a good recommendation. Right on the corner we found Vaso Lounge, which was practically empty but was about to start some live jazz. We were wooed in by the band. It was pretty amazing, it was only just the middle of the day, but basically every place had some sort of live music offering. We sat in Vaso Lounge for an hour or so and had a few drinks, listening to the smooth sounds of New Orleans jazz! It was pretty easy to see why this city had such a good reputation. The only thing that moved us from there was our growing hunger, as they didn't do food there. No matter, because the whole street was filled with options. We walked up and down the street to check it out (it wasn't all that long), and ended up settling on a place called Bamboula's just a couple of doors down from Vaso Lounge. This place was lively, and had a high energy band jumping around on stage. It didn't take us long to settle in here. We ordered some food and drinks, and listened and swayed the afternoon away. I got a catfish Po Boy for lunch, which was really good. Po Boys are a New Orleans specialty; a long crispy roll filled with salad and meat, and there are many different varieties. The afternoon pretty much evaporated at Bamboula's, and by the time we did leave, we were a little bit drunk. No surprises there. As it had been such a big day yesterday, this was a good opportunity to head back towards the hotel, grab our bags and finally get into our room, so we began the trek that way. Along the way, Stace got distracted by a foot massage place and decided to get a quick foot massage. Foot massage places were everywhere, and probably not all that great, but having had a few drinks their salespeople became very convincing to Stace. After that, having both consumed a bit of alcohol, we both desperately needed a toilet stop, and decided to stop in at a place called BB King's Blues House, which was a bar facing the street. Not being able to just go to the toilet there, we each got a drink and sat by the street. There was also wifi here so we were able to connect in to the rest of the world, which kept us there for another drink. By the time we were ready to leave there, we were getting hungry again, so rather than doing what most responsible people would do, and what our original intention was, and get some food to take back and have an early night at the hotel, we got a seat at the back of BB King's to have dinner, continue drinking, and listen to the band. Lucky we did, because it was so much fun! This band was really awesome, and the place was packed. We ordered a massive plate of nachos for dinner (maybe seeing the Steamboat Natchez got us craving it), and our waitress was really enthusiastic about us. Maybe it was because we were drunk, or maybe it was our accents (which she loved). Stace thinks she was attracted to me, to which I think why wouldn't she be? Hard to blame her. Either way, I made sure to hug her heaps to lead her on. Plus I like hugs. It's fair to say we were pretty drunk when we left there. Typical. Despite this generally clouding our better judgement, this time we actually did stick to plan, and headed straight back to our hotel. I think that was more for practical purposes though - we moved quickly because we both knew, having consumed what we had, a need to **** was always only just around the corner, and we weren't going to be caught midway between our hotel again. Finally we got back to the hotel and checked into our room. Having started so early, it still wasn't all that late a night, and we'd been to the toilet and settled in bed before 11pm. Before we did sleep, we called my mum, whose birthday it was at home (it wasn't here yet due to time differences), and drunk talked to her. It was the second time in as many that we have called that we were drunk. Then, it was bedtime. New Orleans; different city, same outcome. Drunk. Happy birthday Mum!
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