We stayed for two days in New Orleans, specifically in the French Quarter, which is beautiful and funnily enough, quite French looking. With streets called Toulouse Avenue and such, you really do feel like you’re in a completely different place. This is made all the more surreal when you round a corner to see a beautiful building with ornate wrought-iron railings, with a skyscraper sticking out of the top… Like this:
That’s a funny thing about America (there are a lot of funny things about America – so many in fact I think that ‘funny things about America’ might have to be a completely separate post), every American City looks the same – just a mass of skyscrapers, some have more skyscrapers, some have less, but they’ve all got at least one token tall building – if you get lost head for that and you’re all good.
New Orleans has another interesting quirk. We tried to take a drive from the French Quarter to the Garden District to have a look around. A fairly simple looking route quickly became hugely complex when we got on the street where we needed to turn left… Apparently you can’t turn left in New Orleans. No, seriously. All the blocks are really close together, and each one has a set of traffic lights and signs mounted above your head. You can imagine the scene therefore when I am doing my thing with the map saying ‘turn left turn left,’ Becky says ‘no seriously I can’t,’ and I look up to see a row of no-left-turn signs as far as the eye can see, stretching off into the distance.. We still to this moment don’t know why you’re not allowed to turn left, if you approached that road from any other direction you were allowed to drive on it, but apparently turning left is a no go. Anyway, we carried on up the road hoping for a left turn (it never appeared) until we decided we really had better turn right, then turn around and approach the ‘no left turn’ from a different angle. The reason for this was that The Book told us not to go too far North in New Orleans as it not as safe for tourists to be wandering about in. It even gave us the name of the street that we weren’t meant to go North of. I don’t know where we were in relation to that street but I’m pretty sure we were close if not above it, so for the second time in almost as many days we quickly turned around and went back to the safety of the touristy bit.
On the first morning we had one of the best breakfasts we’ve had this holiday. We went to ‘The Grill’ which was again recommended by The Book. I read the tripadvisor reviews on it before we went and it said ‘don’t be alarmed by the crazy waiters..’ Becky did not read them and I didn’t say anything.. So we arrived and went through the door and on our way in were greeted by Joey. Here is the man himself:
This was a very covertly taken picture as if he’d seen what we were up too it would have been all too exciting. So anyway, we walk in and Joey says to Becky “heyyy baby sit yourself down over here my darling, what can I get you today” (or something very similar) then after giving her the chance to look at the menu… “Alright baby lets get it on” – we assumed that meant ‘what would you like to eat’ so proceeded to order an omelette. Becky by this point is several shades redder than usual, surprised that I was finding it so funny, I thought it might be time to tell her what I’d heard about him before! The omelette was the best omelette I’ve ever had by a long way (it had chilli on the top!) and our breakfast entertainment was out on by our dear Joey singing and dancing and generally being excitable. They were all really nice people though and talked to us (you all sit on the bar with Joey in the middle) giving us tips on where to go and one lady even gave us this fudge/praline thing which was fantastic. In fact the only grumpy person in that place was the man at the till, although maybe that’s because he had to work with Joey every day! All the food in New Orleans was delicious, I reckon you could have a pretty good foodie holiday there if you were so inclined.
Our hotel was in the French Quarter too, and I think has been one of the best we’ve had, small but romantic.
Perhaps it was a little too cozy, especially given one of our other favourite habits (besides being late). New Orleans is really hot and humid in the middle of the day, so we decided that we’d retreat to the comfort of our air conditioned room for an hour or so. So there we are, watching TV and Becky says “shall we have a quick nap?”
“Yes, but it can’t be too long”
“Ok, set the alarm on for 15 mins time”
3 hours later, we wake up. We missed most of the afternoon and feeling a little sorry for ourselves we went for dinner and saw what we could. Over-napping – it’s a curse. Never trust us with an alarm clock, it’s not a good plan.
And finally, I want to take a minute to talk about trains. At home, everyone who lives in our area is getting concerned about a new high speed rail link they want to build between London and Birmingham called HS2. My message to them is, it’s not the high speed trains you wanna worry about, it the low speed ones. At the end of the day, when a high speed train goes past at least it’s over and done with. Here, not so much. There are plenty of crossings over railways, particularly in towns, and the first time we saw a train we were really excited, for the first minute…
For the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th minutes our emotions ranged from puzzlement to confusion to disbelief to despair and even the sort of dread I can only liken to when you were a kid playing hide and seek and realise, whilst in a particularly good hiding place, that you really need to pee. I don’t know how a train can be 10 minutes long but we counted one the other day and it was 125 carriages.. 125! And it’s one of those giant rumbly freight trains too – the front can easily be a km away from the back if my maths serves me correctly, which it rarely does. I guess that they have to be that big because of the distances they’re travelling, but I don’t understand how it’s scientifically possible. I’m basing this on the fact that when I was little I had a toy brio train set, and I can categorically tell you that it’s not possible to have a train with more than about 8 carriages, because if you do it falls over in the middle round corners. A kilometer long train? It just doesn’t seem right to me.. Maybe that’s why it has to go so slow. Also, when they go through the towns they spend the entire time honking their giant and very loud horns, which keep Becky awake at night.
Anyway, enough about trains now it’s time to follow the Mississippi River up to Texas!
Chris