Louisiana!!!

Bonjour!!!

I have posted another entry below this one because I never finished it. There is no gap, so never fear! haha.
Not that ya'll ever did. :P

Louisiana. What can I say? It was seriously fun!

On the friday I got up early and my awesome friend drove me to the airport (hugs). I was early (yay!) and so shopped around a bit. Eventually my friend turned up and it was time to head for the security (fun times).

The flight to Louisiana was not bad (the flight back had some nasty turbulence). It went pretty quick and when we arrived we turned our clocks back an hour (yay for gaining time!) due to the time zone change.

When we arrived we had to pick up a rental car and then drive to our hotel. The car was pretty nice but gtting to the hotel was another story.
My goodness! The roads in New Orleans are kind of insane! New construction everywhere and little side streets and a crazy insane amount of u-turns!!! To get to a place you could see could take a long tme because there were detours and roads that were like spaghetti going everywhere!!!!

We actually went around in a giant circle 4 times because the GPS was getting confused and so were we!!! It was super tiring and frustrating.

Alas, we got there eventually. The place was quite nice. We dumped our stuff in the room and then were hungry so asked for a place to eat. Luckily a place was recommended to us and it was a lovely restaurant famous for their cheesecake.

I ate a cajun local dish and it burnt my throat. ...but it was nice!
The cheesecakes looked amazing but they didn't have the one that we wanted so we passed (not to mention I was pretty full and we had dinner reservations...)

Dinner was at a place called Snug Jazz. I was pretty yummy, and I tried some root beer (non-alc) stuff. I thought it would be like Ginger Beer but it wasn't as sharp. I quite enjoyed it. :) The burger was pretty massive and I couldn't eat it all.

After dinner the same place had a Jazz show which we had tickets for. We had time though so went for a bit of a walk.

The area kind of scared me. Posters on polls, creepy dimly lit streets, creepy looking people, beggars, dogs everywhere, creepy looking above ground cemetaries...eeary silence. Yeah I was happy to not be alone!

The show was so cute. It looked exactly like you might expect. Unfortunately you weren't allowed to take pics (like a lot of places in the city - especially places that sells masks!) so I can't show you much othr than what the room looked like before the show. It was very authentic and quite enjoable. It's just eventually jazz all sounds the same to me so I had to try hard not to fall asleep!
I learnt that you are meant to clap when there are solos and especially when the Sax dude was playing.

Omg one thing I thought was super awesome that I noticed afterwards was the street musicians. They lt the night up with music and it was such a fun cultural aspect.
I also love the cute lamposts and statues and horsepoles and art and street names on the foopath.

I wasn't a fan of the scary uneven roads and paths though! You had to be constantly aware of where you were walking or risk tripping over or worse!

Saturday we explored the French Quarter. There are a crazy amount of horse and carriages floating around the streets with all he cars. Kind of made driving more challenging, but it was a nice touch. :)

We were going to eat at Cafe du Monde but the line to get in was crazy long so we skipped that and found another place to grab a bite to eat. It wasn't bad but I really miss free range eggs on toast with bacon. Yum. :)
I doscoveed the awesomeness of apple jam (or jelly..whatever you want to call it). It freaked me out to start with but when I tried it I was pleasantly surprised...

Walking around the French Quarter as interesting. Nothing like how I thought it would look. It seemed kind of cramped and run down, but with a lot of history and culture surrounding it.

I found a French Market and it was so cool! Lots of interesting food and shopping. :)

When we wer walking down the street we encountered this cool outside concert. They were playing spanish music and I was so excited! There was salsa and merengue etc and I wished I had someone to dance with!

When we walked back near Cafe du Monde the line was no-where near as long so we actually went there. Their beignets were a requirement to try, apparntly. I was good with that because they looked awesome (and yes, also tasted awesome!)

Unfortunately I felt terrible (not from food I had just eaten) and so we had to try find medicine. We found a place but it was shut. Joy. We found some more places but it was in a different part of town. Looked like the CBD.

I felt better eventually and then we were wondering what to do next.
We managed to get to the botnical gardens before they closed which was awesome. They were abandoned and t was like we had the pace to ourselves. So I was silly and as a result have a whole bunch of crazy pics. :P

The sculpture garden was still open after the botanical gardens shut so we wandered around there for a bit. There were some strange looking things. ...but can't say that I am an art person so I just had fun wandering around.

After that we went to a place called Cafe Degas for dinner. Nothing much appealed to me on the menu(oh my goodness - they had NZ lamb!) and then I started to get eaten alive by the bugs so we abandoned ship after our appetiser (a nice cheese selection) and went to another of the cheesecake places. This time we actually managed to get the cheesecake that we wanted which was called Death by Chocolate. Man it was amazing. So rich but so heavenly!

That night we went on a horse carriage ride! It was so awesome and relaxing. Our tour guide/driver told us lots of fun stuff about the city.

On Sunday we went planatation hunting. The scenr was interesting, we had to drive across swaps and metal bridges. It was really interesting. especially since we went to 2 and they were totally different. One was Creole and one was traditionally white and posh looking.

The first one was called Oak Ally. They were all dressed up and we learnt lots of interesting tradtions. Eg. that a cut pineapple on your bed meant welcome and an uncut one meant go away! There was an awesome candlestick that the father used to indicate how he felt about the man the girl was dating.

I was interested to learn about the slaves since we studied about it in History class.

Can I just add that they have awesome [real] frozen lemonade, too? :D


Our second tour guide was awesome. He was funny and made sure we hada good time. In this tour we actually got to see slave cabins which were fascinating. It's crazy how small they were and how many people lived in such small place. :S
We also were told about Code Noir and various ways things were done back then. I love how bottles were so numerous they were used to decorate the gardens!

Dinner was at Applebees. The spinach/artichoke appetiser thing was really nice! My meal was also nice (a pasta) but I forgot the doggy bag that I put it into after... :/

We went on a Voodoo tour!
Actually, we were lucky to get on it because we almost missed it (it's hard to find parking in the French Quarter for one thing!). This was the most fascinating tour of them all for me because I learnt the most. I dind't know anything much about voodoo before and after I felt a lot more informed - and let me say, it's nothing like what I thought and what a lot of people stereotype it to be like!!! The tour guide was also very good for this tour as well and it actually amused me that he was so cynical about a lot of things...

iHop for breakfast on Sunday! I love that place. ...and they had some awesome Fall specials which were yummmmmmy. :D
We explored the architecture of the city a little before our cruise.
It was called the Natchez and is the only surviving steam paddle boat on the Mississippi (of that area?). The weather was kind of crappy but it was a relaxing journey.

Before our cruise was over we passed by a place called The Riverwalk. It looked nice so we decided to head on over there after.
There was a train in the way of the entrance to the place so we went through the Hilton to get to the Riverwalk (just as well, that train went on foreverrrrrr).
The riverwalk (obviously Louisiana's version, since there is also one in Texas) was an underground shopping mall! So cool!

I was entertained by the pretty things and the mardi gras decorations as well as the places to eat.

There was a fudge place that had free samples (and ya'll should know how I feel about free samples by now). The fudge was amaaaaazing. The best I have ever had. Whilst savouring the goodness I saw candy apples of all varieties in a case. Now, I had never tried one but had seen them alot. So I decided it was time to try one.

The thing was massive an took forever to figure out how to eat (and even then it was akward and messy). But it wasn't bad. :) At least I've tried one now.
The Chinese food we had for dinner was also very yummy. No idea why I craved Chinese but I am glad I did!

The last day consisted of a little shopping at a mall, discovering the wonders of Wholefoods and returning the rental car. That, and waiting the 5hours for the plane back to Orlando. I hated that the vacation was over, but I did feel like I had pretty well explored New Orleans.

I am grateful for the adventure and experiences.


I want to share something random. It might amuse you, but unlikely it will amuse you as much as it did me!!!
When I was in the restrooms at the airport I discovered this scary and entertaining device. The toilet seat moved! Uh, yes..I have film... But anway!

Time to go do something other than type!!!
Click HERRRRRRE to see a sample of my Louisiana pics!!!


Hugs to you all!

xx

On a lame work note: ergh. I hate having only 6hour shifts scheduled for the next few weeks... How laaaaaaame.

But I am going to balance it out with the fact that it is...
24 daysssss till cruise time!!!

Woop woop!!!!