We checked into our hotel, Maison St Charles, and I was very impressed. Not the fanciest place we´ve stayed in so far, but it was the cheapest, we got two beds and air conditioning, a laundry, a pool and free internet. Not to mention the bar that was only a few steps away from our door. While Tara internetted, I did some laundry and sat in the bar chatting to Liz, the bartender.
When it cooled down a little - which it doesn´t do a lot of in New Orleans, we headed into the French quarter. Our hotel was too far to walk in the heat, so we ended up taking a taxi.
We started with dinner - at a place I have forgotten the name of - on Bourbon street, we had some delicious local dishes, mostly seafood, and started on the cocktails. Then we walked up and down Bourbon street, which is exactly like in the movies. It is crowded and rowdy and you walk in and out of bars with your drinks, filling them up when needed. We stopped in a few places that had live bands, not jazz, rock. American rock. Which is nice for the first few songs and then they all just start sounding the same. More soft ballad type rock than real rock though you wouldn´t think it the way the bands and the audiences carry on (I think the heaviest song we heard was Ýou give love a bad name´by Bon Jovi.)
As it turned out, we had arrived in New Orleans on the weekend of ´Southern Decadence´, the third largest gay and lesbian festival in the country. We came across the celebrations when we crossed paths with a bunch of God botherers with banners proclaiming that sodomy was a sin and that Jesus hates sinners. This didn´t seem to bother the gay guys who were having a ... gay old time right next to them. Good on them.
We did eventually find a place with a band playing more jazzy music, with four guys playing brass instruments.
In between being bothered by Steve and his boss Roy - hicks from Miami - I managed to have a conversation with Duane, the trombone player. He is a school teacher by day and plays in the band because he loves it. The conversation inevitably turned to "The Storm" and he told me that he was in Texas with his daughter for a long time and couldn´t get work there. He had only just returned home and was rebuilding his life. All the locals we spoke to about "The Storm" seemed to just be getting on with their lives as best they could, and positively at that.
I woke up still feeling drunk, I think we went home at about 3am, and was just waiting for the hangover to hit me. It never did, thank god. I called and booked an air-boat ride for 12.30 and then we chilled out at the hotel.
They picked us up at 1.00 and we drove about 30 minutes to the edge of the marshes. Here we waited around for a while and then got on a six person air-boat which is faster and more fun - score! because we only paid for the 16 person one. The boat itself was loads of fun. An air-boat is the flat, shallow, boat with the big fan at the back. It was loud, and wet at times, but you just skid around corner and hop over grass and logs and anything else in the water.
After about 30 minutes of trying to scare the shit out of us Felix, our driver, stopped and took out a pack of marshmallows. He proceeded to throw them in the water, luring and feeding the alligators. I don´t know how they figured out about marshmallows, but it works a charm.
Then Felix started talking. He was incredibly funny. He unapologetically made fun of us, himself, people from Louisiana and his own people, coon-asses. He told us how he sleeps with his sister because she is better looking than the other girls. He told us how they go hunting for marsh rats at night with a light and a golf club - they get paid $5 a rat by the government in an effort to get rid of them - and that a coon-ass bachelor party is all about drinking and rat clubbing. He told us how the potholes in town are not caused by trucks, but rather by fat Louisiana people getting tired and sitting down.
After he had entertained us for a while, we went for more of a ride. We came upon a shallow, muddy area, and Felix stopped. He said he always gave his customers a choice - turn right and we stay clean, go straight and we get dirty. We opted for dirty, to the horror of the couple from Atlanta, but the joy of the Aussie guys. So Felix jumped through the mud and splattered us so badly that even he was shocked, but very proud of himself.
Tara and I were both thinking that Felix was quite a good looking chap, but when he took his sunglasses off we both changed our minds, and giggled about it later. His eyes were weird, too close together and just funny looking. He would have fit right in with the locals from ´Deliverance´.
It started raining on our way back into town and by the time we got to the city the streets were all flooded. It was amazing, there was water everywhere, high over the pavements. We asked the bus driver why it looked that way and he said that ever since ´The Storm´, the cities drainage was blocked up and slow. Every time it rains there, the streets flood. A sore reminder of what happened.
Back in town, we got cleaned up and went back to the French Quarter for a ´ghost tour´, which was more of a historical tour around the haunted places in the area. Our tour guide was very good, when she wasn´t trying to sell us her Garden District tour or boasting about her daughter´s film achievements. There is a lot of history and violence - decadent white people and their slaves - that went down in New Orleans, and there were a number of important battles fought there in the war for independence.
Our guide also explained how the ´Southern Decadence´celebration came about. Several gay people were killed in a hate crime, a fire was started in a building from which there was no exit. Their friends pushed the government for stronger penalties against hate crimes and they got what they wanted. A year after the death of their friends, they gathered in New Orleans to commemorate and celebrate. Each year they came back and each year it got bigger.
Learning the history really changes the way you see the city, and the way you feel in it, I would like to go back and do more sightseeing than drinking. Or maybe more of both.
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