8.10.2007
Up at 4 AM. 4:30 breakfast 4:50 leave for airport. Stand outside of airport for 30 min. to check my bag - baggage handler wanted a tip - WTF?? At 9 AM the airline gives me a small cookie. I'm hungry. At 10:15 I get 8 mini-pretzels on the second flight... still freakin' hungry...
Wait at the airport for 4 hours for everyone else to arrive. Almost finished my really good book - Split Second by avid Baldacchi. Traveling takes the fun out of vacation...
All the flights come in and we get "super sketchy and WAY too eager to drive us to our hotel" cab driver. The French Quarter is much farther from the airport than I anticipated...
We arrive at our hotel - the Royal Sonesta, the only hotel on Bourbon Street. I imagine that not alot sleeping is done here, far too noisy. The hotel gave away the rooms we received (double beds) and 'upgraded' our rooms to king bed with balcony so now the two occupants need to share a bed... fun! My roommate for the weekend is Karen's friend Kerry. Together we are the only two with kids - we don't know what sleeping in is (or sleeping at all for that matter) so this hotel will be fine for us.
After setting into our rooms we decided to go for a walk around the French Quarter.
We walked a long way and settled on drinks at Margaritaville in Jackson Square. Architecturally this area is beautiful, lots of buildings with georgeous balconies! Margarittaville was really fun! We went to the bar on the 3rd floor where the seats around the bar were tire swings! It was fun trying to eat nachos and drink my margarita (with extra salt of course) while trying to stay in the swing.From there we did some more walking and ended up on the other end of Bourbon Street and passed a bar that had these specialty drinks called 'hand grenades'.
They tasted like Ecto Coolers mixed with Midori Sours - very yummy, but very strong!From there we checked out some shops and then ventured back to the hotel to wait for Karen's local friend, Lenore, to arrive so we could start our night of fun.
We had dinner at the ACME oyster house. I was trying to eat relatively healthy and thats not easy in 'Nawlins' I ended up having red beans and rice w/ sausage and was disappointed I spent calories on it but it did fill me up which was good considering how much I would end up drinking that night.
This place is surreal. It totally transforms intoa wild street party at night. Karen was wearing a gold tiara and a red sash w/ blinking lights to show off her 'bachlorette' status.
She got lots of attention...even if she didn't want it. We went into lots of clubs and did alot of dancing and drinking. Karen even did some mechanical bull riding - she lasted tons longer than anyone else there and she was wearing a dress!Lots of creepy guys in those clubs - its been so long since I've been in a club that I sort of forgot about that side of it. I had one guy come up to me grab my hand and massage it really creepily just before he licked it. I wanted to burn my hand.
About 1 AM I was running out of steam. Being up for 22 straight hours will do that to you. About 2:30 I headed back to the hotel with Kerry and the others stayed out to close the clubs.
8.11.2007
Kerry and I were up at 8, which is sleeping in for us. Knowing the others wouldn't be up for a while we decided to head to breakfast. We went to a little place called Cafe Beignet and had breakfast sandwhiches. Remember my 'eat healthy' promise? Even this sandwich was dripping with grease... add a cafe au lait and it was quite yummy though :)
The others were still asleep so we hit the tourist shops were I found shirts for Shawn, Arianna and myself as well as the obligatory fridge magnet. I nearly lost my camera in the process, forgetting it at one of the stores. The others joined us at this point and we signed up for a cemetery tour only to find that all tours were canceled due to the extreme heat - 105 degrees. I thought I'd bitch and complain about the heat but it wasn't bad at all for me.
So Marissa and Kerry went shopping while the rest of us went back to the hotel for swimming! We even enjoyed $10 pina coladas poolside! They weren't worth $10 though... I left them at 3 to head back to the room for a nap. The others said the bachelor party that was in the pool with us (and drinking very heavily) didn't get out of the pool for hours... wonder how they managed to use the toilet with all that drinking huh? Ya, we did too, so we didn't go back to the pool after that...I napped until 6 and then we all met up to go to dinner. We decided to do a 'normal' meal and headed out to the Garden District, where Karen lived when she was there, to have pizza at a good place she knew. We thought we could take a trolly car but they haven't run since Katrina so we ended up grabbing a cab to Rocky's pizza. I got a "French Market" pizza with vegetables, the closest to healthy I got all weekend. It was yummy! We caught a bus back to Bourbon Street and the hotel - I jumped in the shower quickly and then we were ready to head out on the town!
We ended up walking around alot more this night - just meandering up and down the street. Karen had a bachlorette T-shirt that had a list of 'chores' she had to get guys to do for her:
- One guy stripped in the middle of the street and gave him her boxers!
- We had a hard time finding a guy with a 6-pack to fill on requirement...
- We also had a VERY hard time finding a guy with a condom to fill that requirement...
- We think NO is full of fat, out-of-shape guys who don't have sex...
Toward the end of the night we ended up at the Cat's Meow for karoke... we danced and sang and eventually got up on stage to sing Madonna's like a prayer.By 4 AM we were ready to go, the crowd really shifted all the super creepy guys were out. We were walking down the street and they were literally grabbing our arms to pull us with them - super scary. We had some MAJOR disinfecting to do when we got back, our feet were nasty from people either puking or spilling beer on them and just the general nasty dirty feeling had to be washed off. As a matter of fact I threw away the sandals...
In bed by 4:30 am sure to be up in just a few hours... I hate that feeling...
8.12.2007
Yep we were both up at 9:30 and took showers AGAIN. The water smells funny in New Orleans. We had to check out at noon so we met with the other girls in the lobby and checked our bags with the bell hop and went to Bubba Gump Shrimp Company for lunch. I got a salad, yes, something healthy! It was quite yummy!
From there were did some more window shopping and I got two more shirts and a couple of magnets for friends/family. Then we stopped at Cafe Du Mont so I could finally try a beignet, yes it was yummy but there was no way I could eat 3! We walked back to the hotel and got our bags and waited for the cab back to the airport.I tried to sleep at the gate for either of my flights but it was just too hard. I was exhausted and just wanted sleep but the noises and people made that too hard.
My flight got into my home airport at 11:10 PM (20 minutes early) and I had to wait an additional 40 for Shawn to show up. There were SO many flights coming in that he couldn't even pull up to the curb so that I could get in the car, he had to keep driving around until a spot opened up. I was very annoyed. Got into the car and all my annoyance drifted away as I saw Arianna asleep in her car seat. I didn't truely realize how much I missed her until I saw her sweet face.
When we got home Shawn took my bags in so that I could put Arianna back to bed. We took the long way... she woke up and I had to have some smother time. When I put her in her crib she finally got a good look at me and her eyes got real big, she broke out a HUGE smile and lifted her arms above her head for me to pick her up... I relented and spent a few minutes just loving on her. I love being her mom.
The low-lights:
Travel - Travelling take the fun out of vacation.
The food - it is close to impossible to find something healthy. I can't say I really enjoyed ANY of the food I had there
Bourbon Street - this is a high and low light. It's a fun place to do once or twice... but after a while you get tired of drunk creepy people. I couldn't imagine living/working there!
The heat - its Nawlins in August so I should complain but boy o boy was it hot and humid. It did make me appreciate New England more though :)
The high-lights:
The architecture - the buildings in the French Quarter were beautiful! The balconies are a site to see!The local bands - there is great entertainment on bourbon Street with each bar/club having one. Preservation Hall had some fabulous jazz acts. Next time I go I really wan to sit in there and really enjoy them.
The shops - there are TONS of touristy shops where you can purchase just about anything!
All in all I'm really glad I went and would gladly go again but not in the summer, not at Mardi Gras and not for more than a few days. Next time I'll see more jazz, stay in a hotel further away from Bourbon Street and go on some tours.
1 comment:
OMG your post brought back so many memories of my days in NO. I miss it! We used to hang out all the TIME at the Cats Meow! WOW! Talk about a flashback. Glad to see you had fun. It really is a wonderful city, isn't it? And you are right, not the place for a diet. too much yummy food. :) This was a fun read for me:)
Post a Comment