I'm not even sure where to start with New Orleans! We had such a great time, and there was SO much that we did in such a short amount of time!
HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The place that we stayed was absolutely fantastic! We had missed our opportunity on paying for an affordable hotel room, so we took to other options. Airbnb.com is a great site where people rent out their own homes to strangers to use while they are in town. You have the option of renting the entire place, or just a room if you'd like, depending on what the owner offers up. We found a great place off of Canal Street, that looked great by the pictures.
It was spacious, had the option to sleep up to four people and was an entire half of a townhouse. We stayed there three days for around $300 total. Take a look!
HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The place that we stayed was absolutely fantastic! We had missed our opportunity on paying for an affordable hotel room, so we took to other options. Airbnb.com is a great site where people rent out their own homes to strangers to use while they are in town. You have the option of renting the entire place, or just a room if you'd like, depending on what the owner offers up. We found a great place off of Canal Street, that looked great by the pictures.
It was spacious, had the option to sleep up to four people and was an entire half of a townhouse. We stayed there three days for around $300 total. Take a look!
BOURBON STREET AND THE MURDER CAPITOL
After we were all settled in, we did some exploring! And by exploring, I mean to say that we spent upwards of four hours walking up and down Bourbon Street and the surrounding area in the French Quarter. We saw some great architecture, Jackson Square (We had dinner at a great place next to the cathedral. They had the spiciest peas I will probably ever eat in my entire life, but they were delicious!), saw a bunch of different street performers, a bunch of homeless people, and A LOT of drunk people.
This was a Friday night. We each had a drink as we just casually walked up and down the street, stopping here and there to check out something happening in the street like a group of Break Dancers, some musicians, stopped in a jazz club to listen to some live music. We even got to witness a new bride and her groom dancing in the street to a very talented violinist. The music was lovely, they were lovely, and it was a very touching moment. (Until they stopped, she got choked up and said "I'm sorry, we just got married." DUH.)
We walked around for a very long time, and not having walked around in the day time, we had no idea where we were, no idea how to get back to the car and being later in the evening and towards the side streets it was getting less and less likely that we would find someone to point us in the right direction. Brent finally found someone...turns out we were ten blocks up and two blocks over from where we needed to be.
I think it's important to mention for this next part that New Orleans is the murder capitol of the USA. Did you know that? It's true. So when the woman giving us directions told us ten blocks up and two blocks over, we figured we'd start with the two blocks over and THEN go the ten up. She was VERY adamant that we shouldn't do that, so we stuck with the way she mapped out for us. Don't have to tell us twice.
Saturday was more exploring in the French Quarter. On our drive there, we were stopped in our car, in the middle of the street, by a VERY fabulous Meth Head (or something else, who knows?) who wanted to chat about Florida, since he noticed the license plate and that's where he originally comes from. He knew how to saunter off and shake what his momma gave him like it was his job. Really strange but funny encounter.
We started with a brunch in the French Market, a place that reminded me of all of the best parts of a Flea Market back home. They sold all sorts of things, and had counters where food was being sold, too. We sat down at one and Brent had a friend green tomato Po Boy and I had beignets (something that was a culinary goal while I was there.) Delicious food, wonderful people who owned the stand, and a quality place to just stop and people watch.
THE CEMETERY
From there we walked around a little more but decided it was time to move onto other things. One of our big goals while we were there was to go to the cemeteries. If you haven't heard, New Orleans is BELOW sea level, which means that it's residents need to be buried ABOVE ground. This leads to full city blocks of mausoleums and graves. To any oral person this might sound eerie and weird. I, of course, am no ordinary person. Apparently, neither is Brent. After our trip ended we learned that we had spent the MOST of our free time in one cemetery and that this is where we took MOST of our pictures.
It was quiet. It was peaceful. It was shady. Graves dated back to as far as the 1800s from what we found.
One of my favorite moments (which I managed to capture on camera) was a girl sitting on the base of a mausoleum just relaxing and doing some tarot cards all by herself. It was really strange and beautiful.
My words alone cannot be enough to describe the wonder of this place, so I'll let my pictures do the talking.
That's probably enough reading and pictures for one post, right? Enjoy & be on the lookout for when I tell you about what is probably the MOST EPIC pub crawl, EVER.