[4th - 5th July...the horror...the horror...]
The debauchery of Bourbon Street continued, but all we did was walk the length of it six, maybe seven times. By then we were getting a bit bored so we retired to the hotel and had a late night chat on the sunbeds beneath a sky that was blackened by the lingering fireworks cloud (neither of us can remember exactly what we discussed, but we agreed it was a pretty meaningful dialogue).
In the film Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda came here with prostitutes and took acid...I went with my brother and took bottled water.
21 A.D.
The day started badly when I accidentally smashed my eau de
toilette on the bathroom floor – should have taken the guidebook’s advice and
used a plastic bottle. I managed to clear the glass away, but what would I smell
like now, given that I was also down to my last millilitre of spray deodorant?
Nyeargh. No one cares what you smell like in New Orleans.
We decided to spend the morning doing the remaining streets
of the French Quarter, the plan being to go to the western boundary (Canal
Street), up to the northern boundary (North Rampart Street), and then weave our
way back down, taking care not to cross the Eastern boundary of Esplanade
Avenue. Canal Street is the main drag into the CBD and it’s got plenty of palm trees
and liquor stores, as well as part of the main trolley line through the city.
Across from North Rampart Street is the district of Treme where jazz was born
but which is now a no-go area for tourists. We were able to peep across the
street and notice the difference in the standard of the buildings. One thing that
has amazed me from the minute I set foot in this country is how you can be in a
completely different type of neighbourhood just by crossing a single road. And
North Rampart Street certainly felt like we were on the ramparts of the castle of the French
Quarter.
I’ve found New Orleans a bit of a contradiction so far – I’m
never quite sure whether I’m supposed to go crazy or just zonk out. People in
the top half of the French Quarter rise slowly and late, and there weren’t many
folks around. In fact, the only people of note who we met were a couple from out
of town who were scouring the streets to find Brad Pitt’s house. He was
convinced it was nearby, she didn’t think it existed. Bizarrely, I remembered
seeing a picture of it somewhere, but couldn’t place it. Their search was
unsuccessful (I’m sure Mr. Pitt will have been happy about that).
Come the afternoon and we had several tasks to take care of
on t`net, most notably working out where we’re going to be staying next, and in
which town. It’s a wonderful sense of freedom weighed down by a bit of tiresome
admin. For every reasonable deal we get on lodgings, we discard at least
another ten that are too dear, too far out of town, or just too dodgy-looking.
To get searching, we needed free wif-fi, and the last thing
we wanted to do was sit in the freezing hotel lobby balancing the netbook on
our knees as chattering guests came and went. Therefore we had a quick search
for free wif-fi hotspots in the Quarter and found five cafes within easy
walking distance. We headed to the first – closed, headed to the second –
closed, third – closed (and derelict), fourth and fifth – also closed. What’s
going on here? Happy 4th of July, Grayboys! I hate this stoopid
public holiday! Up until then it had been just like any other day, bar a “Happy
4th of July!” from a checkout girl when we bought some supplies.
Then the daily rains came, but we found ourselves within dashing distance to
the hotel. So where did we end up? Sitting in the freezing lobby balancing the
netbook on our knees as chattering guests came and went!
Eventually the streets dried out and our luck changed - we found a Starbucks near
the river with a good internet connection available. Finally we could do a bit
of browsing in relative peace! Not wanting to look like a freeloader, I ordered
my usual small black coffee. The guy behind the counter handed it over and said
it was on the house if I said, “I love America.” I said, “I love America.” He
winked and said it was on the house anyway -they are all day because of it
being the 4th of July. I love this freakin` public holiday!
By 7 p.m. we’d finished our admin and gone back to get
changed for the evening’s entertainment. Now we were starting to pass
enthusiastically patriotic people in the streets with stars and stripes all
over them. Tim had requested we go to the Acme Oyster Bar because,
surprise-surprise, there had been an episode of Man Versus Food filmed there many moons ago. It was that popular we
even had to queue up outside for 15 minutes before a table became free. I
thought I’d do the when-in-Louisiana thing and ordered “seafood gumbo”, whereas Tim began his meal with an oyster shot. We have long stopped caring how silly we
look taking pictures of our food.
In New Orleans they shoot their fireworks up from barges on
the river, but that didn’t start until 9 p.m. To fill the time, we returned to
the tawdry glory of Bourbon Street, returning home like heroes on the lash.
Now, there is a tradition along the street whereby people hang over the
balconies and throw beads down to ladies who expose certain parts of their
anatomy. If you’d like to know just what I had to do to get my beads, go
straight to jamesandtimsworldtouruncensored.blogspot.co.uk
After walking the length of Bourbon Street with a $3 “big
ass beer” (a regular-sized English pint in a plastic glass) in our hands, we
headed over to stand with everyone else beside the river. By now the humidity
had fallen away and the temperature was just right. And, when the fireworks shot
into the night sky in a wondrous display, we stood there as two lone
Englishman, surrounded by Americans whooping their delight as they celebrated
gaining their independence from our great nation. I gave Tim a quick nudge in
the ribs when he tried to break into God
save the queen. Unfortunately my camera threw a bit of a wobbler while
taking the photos of the fireworks, so it probably doesn’t do them justice, but
here’s a selection anyway...
Looking down on the revellers from above put a new
perspective on things. It was also where we met Zoe, the shots girl. The poor
lass spent 30 minutes trying to sell us one of her shots, but we steadfastly
pleaded our excuses of world-travelling-poverty (for the price she was asking
they would have been even weaker than the satchets of coffee the French Market
Inn provided). Or maybe she was just happy to talk to us, or rather to talk to
guys who weren’t trying to cop a quick feel or shower her with lewd remarks. I
even asked her what her favourite Beatles album was, but I forget what she
said. She was from Philadelphia, came to study in New Orleans, the money ran
out, she quit college, took a bar job, and now she’s stuck here, uncertain of
her next step. Why am I telling you all this? Well, it suddenly occurred to me
that I write about all these people we come across, but you never get to see
them in pictures (and you must be sick of the endless photos of Grayboy#1 and
Grayboy#2). It’s not that I don’t want to feature anyone else in the blog, just
that it often feels awkward to ask. Anyway, with a few big ass beers inside me,
I asked to take a photo up on the balcony, and so I proudly present a shot of Tim with
Zoe the shots girl (shots just out of shot):
We managed to get up for 8 the next morning, but boy could
we have used some more sleep! We took the trolley (a $1.25 fare gets you
anywhere you want to go) west to the Garden District to sober up in the calm,
but eerie surroundings of Lafayette cemetery. The original settlers in New
Orleans had problems when it came to burying their dead – because of the
regular flooding, coffins would rise up from the soggy ground and float down
the river. Therefore they adopted the Spanish-style practice of erecting large
tombs above ground to create mini necropolis-style cities. I’d read that these
cemeteries should never be entered alone because they are crawling with armed
robbers, but I had it on good authority from the visitors centre that the one
at Lafayette was safe – and it was, with tour guides regularly passing through.
While growing up back in dear old England, our family would often end up
strolling through graveyards after picnics and us kids used to play the game of
Who can find the oldest grave? In
today’s visit, Tim won the contest when he found a family tomb where the
matriarch was born in 1808 (can’t remember when she died).
In the film Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda came here with prostitutes and took acid...I went with my brother and took bottled water.
My time in New Orleans was coming to an end. I had arrived
in Louisiana under a full moon, but I was leaving under a cloud of uncertainty.
Our next destination was the gigantic state of Texas and our plan was to stop
off at the cowtown of Fort Worth. However, so far accommodation had proved to
be far too expensive or too far out of town. We’d sent out several requests to
couchsurfing hosts to put us up, but so far none had responded...
