Born on the bayou

20 A.D.

[All of the fun from Tuesday, 3rd July.]

Altogether now – “There is a house in New Orleans, it’s called...The French Market Inn!” Yep, that’s where we’ve checked into – the heart of The French Quarter, which is the oldest part of the city and therefore it was built on the highest ground and not affected by the devastation of Katrina. It’s also the safest place to be in The Big Easy, and we wisely took a cab from the Greyhound station. However, it should be noted that when we arrived at said station they were pumping some smooth, chilled-out Miles Davis sounds through the speakers – nice touch, and just what you need first thing in the morning after a long bus ride. And, just to get it off my chest, I started that bus ride stuck between a hillbilly boy in front of me tossing and turning on a seat so far back it was almost in my lap, coupled with a loud little redneck girl behind who was constantly booting my chair like it was an American football. Sweet home Alabama indeed!

Anyway, back to the French Market Inn - although there’s only wi-fi in the lobby (possible delays to future blog posts predicted!), it really is everything that a low budget hotel in New Orleans should be. The Knights Inn at Nashville was fine, but it only had a functional charm and zero character, whereas The French Market Inn has character seeping out of every cranny (if you ignore the various building work that is going on here and there – they’re sooo good they’re expanding). The bellboy had to take us across three courtyards just to get to the elevator for our floor (the fourth).

And here's the place in all it's glory..

Only joking, it's more like this...

The room is another double double-bedder, with a lot of open floor space between said beds and the bureau against the far wall -  space to hold one’s own mini mardi-gras? Yep, it feels like we’re back in the 18th century and about to make the Louisiana purchase. So let’s see what the Big Easy has on offer to us outside of the room...although a quick flick through the TV channels showed that Conan The Barbarian was just starting...to stay or to go?

The good thing about staying in The French Quarter, besides avoiding the deadly crack-and-gang related violence that plagues the wider city, is that everything is within walking distance to the hotel. This was no longer the Midwest and the temperatures were only in the puny 90s – puh! We could go jogging in that without breaking a sweat! However, there is a bit of humidity to make it feel hotter, though not as much as there was in D.C. We headed out under the early afternoon sun, wondering if we would get rain. New Orleans is situated with Lake Pontchartrain directly to the north and the mouth of the Mississippi river cutting through the centre as it heads out to meet the Gulf of Mexico. In one way it feels a bit like being back at the seaside...but with a lot more voodoo.

We wound our way through the battered and bohemian streets, their decaying elegance hanging off every balcony as residents slumped lazily outside the doors to their establishments, smoking away like the ban never happened. In fact, I forgot to mention that in some of the bars in Nashville people were allowed to smoke freely...or maybe they just ignored the rules, but either way it was liberating. But back to New Orleans - it’s the type of place where there’s a bit of history on every corner, though to be fair there’s also a good deal of tat in the vintage shops on every street (antique hinges for $20, anyone?) The actual French market was quite entertaining and i was tempted to buy one of the ten-a-penny voodoo dolls and name it after the Greyhound CEO.

It was getting a little too humid by late afternoon, so we gathered our supermarket sandwich supplies (authentic Cajun cooking can wait for now!) and headed back to our comfortable little corner of Louisiana. The finale to Revenge of the Sith was on the generously-channelled TV, so we dozed into the evening (hey come on, we were sleeping on a bus the night before!) Once we woke up, Bourbon Street was calling...

I’d taken advantage of The Big Easy’s relaxed street drinking laws and filled my hipflask with cheap bourbon (not great by American standards, good stuff by British standards), but I needn’t have bothered. I was hoping to save a bit of cash, but there were plenty of drinks offers on the 14 or so blocks that make up the infamous Bourbon Street. And yes, it was lively; yes, it was crowded; yes, it felt like the place to be...but it was all a bit seedy really. Do you really want to know what we got up to? Ha! To find that out you have to go to jamesandtimsworldtouruncensored.blogspot.co.uk It’s not for the faint-hearted, folks.

When it was time to leave, we headed back to Rue Decatur, but an elderly shoe shine gentleman stopped me with the following:
“Hey, Sir! Guess what?”
"What?"
“I  bet you I know where you got your shoes.”
I smiled a the smile of a very smug man who’d done his homework and replied, “On my feet.”