Day 25 - The House of the Rising Sun

Well it was a real great first night in N'awlins (as the locals say it).

Today was all about seeing what the French Quarter had to offer during the day. I know that there a ton of other things to see around the city and that the French Quarter is only a neighborhood of it, but why risk leaving the area that was 1 for 1.

So as I mentioned before the neighborhood was more or less a 15 by 10 block neighborhood. There were lots of restaurants, tourists shops, and to my surprise a lot of voodoo shops....go figure. The sun and weather really made the day. Walking right out of our Inn we headed straight for the French Market. Here there were loads of people selling not so much produce as there was small shack style restaurants. One right after the other. I was even tempted to buy some mardis gras beads but we all know there's no justice there. There's only one true way to get beads in N'awlins, but that was my goal later that night.

Along the way to the French Market we saw this iconic shot. This church is the

St. Louis Cathedral. Not to toot my own horn but this photo is certainly postcard worthy huh? Well I am the son of a brilliant photographer and I also happen to see the EXACT same shot on a postcard in a shop earlier that day.

This is what it actually looked like inside. Very beautiful but a little smaller than what I had expected. Although it doesn't like it's big to begin with.

We kept exploring the French Quarter through the afternoon while eating at a very poorly run restaurant near the church. The food was mediocre. I'm telling you though, you could never get board walking up and down the streets of the French Quarter. The architecture alone will make you feel you're in a different and awesome world.

Now to get to the party scene. After being acclimated to the NEw Orleans style nightlife we turned our party style to endurance mode. Speaking from experience, New Orleans is a type of city (French Quarter to b more specific), that the more you go out there, the better it is. We had our fair share of figuring out which way the action was the first night. Now we taken the training wheels off and upgraded to a ten-speed.

We decided to do the same thing we did the night before. Go to the convenience store, grab a 12 pack, head back to the hotel, starting drinking, have a shower-beer or two, and hit up Bourbon Street. Now I don't know about Emma or Andy but I was going to get some mardis gras beads before I left New Orleans. Even on Bourbon Street it really isn't kosher for a guy to flash his chest to a bunch of people on the balconies looking down on the street....and I certainly wasn't going to do anything south of the boarder either. So naturally I resorted to harassing (verging on begging) the women to throw some beads down. One woman did throw some down. She probably saw me as the "runt of the litter" type and hated seeing all the other people get some beads. Well whether or not it was out of sympathy, I achieved my goal. To be honest I really didn't care it they were out of sympathy, I was already pretty drunk at that point....then again, she probably was too.

The night consisted of bar hoppin' and we ended up ending it with some karaoke. Emma and I did a lovely, and my lovely I mean ugly, rendition to a Rihanna song. Oh well! We didn't care! It was a blast!!!

It was around 3 am when we finally went to sleep. One thing that I really took from the night life in New Orleans is...I can only imagine what the actual Fat Tuesday Mardis Gras is like.

Aramis

Posted in: Timmy