Day 1 in New Orleans

We awoke late and very very dusty, nursing what was without doubt our biggest collective hangover of the trip. Given it was already well after midday we decided food could not make us feel worse, so we headed down to the shops and bought 4 litres of Gatorade, panadol and a can of soup – breakfast of champions! Following this we jumped on the streetcar and headed into the French Quarter to have a wander. The most interesting thing about the streetcar ride was seeing the levee down on the river. Once we got to the French Quarter we spent a couple of hours just wandering around and as anticipated it was pretty cool - lots of little art galleries and antique stores interspersed with endless souvenir shops.

All of the walking was getting a bit much for our hungover bodies so we decided to sit down at the famous Café de Monde and watch the jazz being played out the front. We also tucked into the famous beignets – which are basically fried croissants with piled icing sugar – afternoon tea of champions. The amount of icing sugar involved is hard to express – there was literally almost as much sugar as there was pastry and by the time we were finished, our table looked like some sort of white Christmas nativity scene.

We went back to the hostel to continue the hangover recovery, do some washing and cook dinner. Wonders was again in charge and again the menu consisted of stag chilli and rice – dinner of champions! After recruiting one of the dudes from the hostel (John / Eric from Wisconsin, dependent on whether you were looking at his real or fake ID) we headed to a place called the Howlin’ Wolf in the warehouse district to watch what we anticipated would be some classic New Orleans jazz – featuring our new friends from Lafayette. Walking there was a surreal enough experience in its own right, given the thickness of the fog and the abundance of abandoned buildings but we arrived, due to Wonders impeccable sense of direction, with no dramas.
Unfortunately however, our expectations of an evening of jazz were way off the mark and the first three acts were death metal, hip-hop and punk. It was weird. We did get to go backstage for a little while, though there was not a great deal to see – apart from the dudes from the bands smoking a pipe. Other highlights of the night included getting given free jumbalaya and taking turns in wearing a poncho – it was that kind of night. The guys that we were there to see (The Can’t Hardly Playboys) turned out to be really good but despite Carl’s inexplicable desire for more beers, sense prevailed and we headed home.

Until next time,

Jez