We made it to New Orleans!!! On the drive in we saw that there were still a LOT of fema trailers and destroyed houses everywhere. After reading reviews of the RV parks that are still open and calling a few hotels, we decided to stay in this gangsta rv place a block from the French Quarter. It has a pool/hot tub and it probably nicer than any hotel we could afford. Although it is pricey at $62.00 a night to stay here, (with my AAA discount) is is definitely worth it to be safe. All of the other cheaper parks were in very bad areas and full of FEMA still.(not really my style) Here there is is some extreme barbed wire that goes around the top of the fence and security controlled gate entrances. Well we are going to go to the pool before we shower up, eat dinner, and head out to Bourbon Street for the night.
Well we had A LOT of fun last night. We showered up in our RV parks super nice bathrooms (seriously this is nicer than staying at a resort) and got the security guard to drive us past the movie sets (they are filming two movies nearby). We were dropped off literally a block from the French Quarter. Chris has never been to New Orleans and I have been here twice, although never when I was of age to to go out and have fun. We ate dinner at Johnny White’s on the upstairs balcony literally overlooking Bourbon Street. Dinner was really good and not too expensive. We ordered fun drinks and ate for right around $50 dollars.
After Dinner, we hit the streets. Instead of going into all the bars and clubs, we would just get drinks and walk around (drinks like the cool hand grenades seen above). The street is closed down so you can walk up and down, watching all the crazies around you. All of the souvenir shops are also open so we looked through all the fun merchandise with drinks in hand. One thing that I didn’t remember was how many strip clubs there were (There is even a strip club filled with Trannies!!!). Overall, it was such a great night that we decided to stay another night.
One thing that Chris and I love about this city is that the cops are really friendly and actually there to keep people safe. The police station is right down the street from us and on our walk back to the RV park, the friendly security guard that dropped us off, came back and picked us up from the end of the street. On Bourbon Street, there was a Cop Van sitting there in one of the intersections and all of the people that they arrested from the night were thrown into the van until the bars closed. Two guys were even handcuffed to each other.
Well today is going to be our sightseeing day. Of course Chris had to put in a few hours of work in the morning but now we are going to head to the pool and eat the FREE STEAKS that the RV park is giving us for lunch (they look and smell really good too :)) Hopefully we will made it to Riverwalk, the Flea Market, and some of the other places around town before we go out tonight!!
UPDATE from Friday
Chris and I headed out on Friday and one of us (ahem not me) wasn’t feeling too well since he is old and can’t handle New Orleans like I can…haha I am totally kidding. Well we had our steaks and fully catered lunch which was AMAZING. It was acutally a FQRV police appreciation lunch, which was fine with us since we already thought to cops there were really cool. We ate poolside and then started off walking for the day.
First we went and walked the French Market. We were not really impressed because it was basically all of the stuff we had previously seen in the gifts shops the night before for like a dollar less. We were hoping there would be more local and original items there. The market just opened back up so it was only half full with vendors. We looked at some of the stores around there and bought a really cool bumper sticker for our rv. It says “Don’t tailgate me, I’ll flick a booger on your windshield.” You would be amazed at how many people just creep up right behind you just to fly right around. Future note to all of you: Be VERY courteous to RV drivers, it is not an easy thing to drive.
While we were shopping, Chris found this miller lite hat with a bottle opener built into it that he fell in love with, and decided not to buy. About ten minutes later he was already on ebay looking it up. After the French Market we went to Cafe Du Monde to get our famous beignets (which were deeelliiciouus).
We kept walking along the river until we passed by the IMAX theatre. We decided to go see a movie and rest up before our walk back to FQRV. We watched Hurricanes, which we thought would be about Katrina. Instead it was more of a wetlands conservation movie with a few news clips from the hurricane. It was really interesting to see (the wetlands really are disapearing because of many man made things like canals, boatways, and leveys that are contaminating the freshwater and promoting erosion.)
Now the real story lies with Chris trying to get some popcorn about ten minutes before the movie starts. He really wanted popcorn so we stood in line for concessions and they served everyone up until the person in front of us and then this woman said “Sorry we are closed.” She proceeded to start to pack everything up and there is a huge line of furious customers waiting. We though it was crazy that a concession stand would close before the movie even started?!?! Chris stood there and tried to convince her not to throw away the popcorn and to just sell it to him, along with a few other people. I went off to try and find a manager and by the time I came back with the upstairs manager saying we wanted to file a formal complaint, Chris and this other guy were FINALLY given their popcorn, for $4.00. By this time the movie had started and we had to try to find seats in a packed theater in the dark (for those of you that have never been to an IMAX they are really dark and I am very clumsy).
After the movie we walked back, jumped in the pool for a little while, and then my good friend Tim Furffy came over to visit our RV and go out for the night with us. I met Tim before classes even started our freshman year and he was part of our Clemson Family. He took us out to get some yummy jambalaya. Chris ordered muffaletta, which was a HUGE sandwich that he couldn’t finish. He decided that he would wrap half the sandwich up in a napkin and carry it around with him for the rest of the night in case he got hungry.
After dinner we went to a few bars on Bourbon Street with Tim. We spent most our time in the Cats Meow watching karaoke, hanging out on the balcony (where we saw a guy almost get his head taken off by a falling beer bottle) and basically just people watched (guy in striped shirt hit on this girl and her friend all night). We walked the streets and took pictures with the Police Officers on horses (they were basically a tourist attraction).
Overall, New Orleans was soooo much fun. We did some laundry before we left FQRV and as soon as I had it all dry and folded, it started POURING down rain… Luckily they let us stay a little while past our checkout to finish packing up so we can continue our LONG drive through Texas. I was so happy I got to see Tim and finally experience New Orleans as a 21 year old!!
Check out our pictures from New Orleans here:
