We left our Washington DC hostel at 6am and caught the metro then the bus to Baltimore Washington International airport (Laura missed out on singing 'Good morning baltimore'!). From there we took a flight to Dallas Fort Worth, then another flight to New Orleans.

In the airport we witnessed military personnel in uniform being treated like royalty - people would go up to them and shake their hand saying 'thank you for your service'. And on every flight the first announcement was that military personnel could board first, before even the first class passengers. Then there were all the different categories of passengers - first class, club world, club class, gold and silver members.....we were usually in the last group to board, but we all had seat numbers so it didn't matter at all!

We arrived at New Orleans at about 4pm local time and discovered that Dave's bag hadn't made it all the way, even though we'd had 2 hours in Dallas for it to get its way onto the next flight. The lady at the lost luggage desk told us it would be on the next flight at 6:15pm and would be delivered to our hotel. We asked at visitors information about the bus into town and were told there was one leaving in 3 minutes and only cost $2 each - result! The bus took about half an hour and then we had about a 20 minute walk to the hotel in the New Orleans heat (although Dave didn't have a rucksack on his back which makes matters worse!).

As Dave had no bag and had a big stain on his tshirt (a bit mysterious that stain, but it washed out!), we decided not to go out to eat that night unless his bag turned up early...which it didn't! So we went to a grocery store we'd found in a brochure and bought some food and drink to enjoy on our balcony. Welcome to New Orrrlins (the correct pronunciation)!