Road Trip Weekend: New Orleans Day 1

 Nick and I are currently sitting in our hotel room on the 18th floor of the Wyndham French Quarter Hotel, overlooking Royal Street. We have a killer view of the river from our window and a whole lot of noise on the street outside.

 This is my first time in New Orleans. We got the opportunity to come because I agreed to a time share presentation thing. So for $199, we get to stay in this pretty nice room in the French Quarter for three nights in exchange for sitting through a time share presentation that we will say no to over and over until they let us go, and the rest of the weekend we can explore a new city. It's not our first sales pitch to sit through by any means (that's how we got our free tickets to Sea World for our trip in June) and we are pretty good at the whole shindig at this point. In fact, it's kind of a fun game for us.

 We left our house this morning at 6:15 and headed east. Nick drove for a while and I got to sleep a little bit longer in the car. Eventually we stopped for a potty break and switched places so he could sleep some more in the car. We made several stops for gas or potty breaks along the way and of course hit a Cracker Barrel for lunch. It isn't an official road trip until you've had Cracker Barrel, after all. After we ate, we took advantage of the big parking lots and walking a half mile to stretch our legs for a bit.

 We finally made it into New Orleans this afternoon around 4:45, but it took us forever once we got into the downtown area to get to the Wyndham check in place. Driving down here is insane. There are cars and people everywhere and NO WHERE TO PARK. I literally pulled over at the bus stop and let Nick out of the car to run in and check us in to get our hotel assignment. The bus actually came while I was sitting there with my hazard lights blinking, but it just stopped in the middle of the street to pick up passengers and then went on. Nick finally came back and we began to make our way to our hotel. We were really only about 3 blocks from it, but it took us a good half hour to get to the valet parking garage.

 People here jaywalk all over the place. They just take off across the street like it's no big deal. The green lights don't stay green for very long, but the red lights are forever. There's so much traffic everywhere that you just inch along, and then people and bicycles and bands and street performers are just weaving in and out of the street like it's perfectly normal. By the time we actually pulled into our parking garage I was a nervous wreck and I'm used to driving in city traffic! But Fort Worth is NOTHING like this. It's stressful, to say the least. I told Nick that the next time I planned on getting in my car was when we were leaving - I don't care how much a taxi cab charges. I'm not driving again in this town until I have to.

Our view

 Once we got into our room and relaxed for a bit, we changed clothes to head down to find some dinner. At this point it was well after 6 pm and we were getting hungry. A friend of mine that lived here at one point recommend Deannie's Seafood and since it was close by, that's where we headed. Every place we walked by had a huge line to get a table, and Deannie's was no exception. We literally waited for an hour and a half before we could be seated. Nick had a catfish and shrimp plate, and I ordered stuffed flounder with vegetables and a salad (that had creole honey mustard dressing on it - YUMMM).

 We finished dinner some time just after 9 pm and started walking back. The streets were even busier now and cars were still trying to make their way through. We decided to take a stroll down Bourbon Street because after all, we were in the Big Easy, right? It's interesting, and I'll leave it at that. Definitely not a place that either of us felt remotely at home in or comfortable. I'm pretty sure I have a hangover just from smelling all the alcohol and I might have lung cancer by now because everyone around here seems to smoke. We walked down for three blocks, turned around and headed back. At least we can say we have seen Bourbon Street. Nick caught one strand of gold beads for me too. They look exactly like a strand that Kate has at home. We bought them at Dollar Tree.

 By 10:15 I had my pajamas on and now I'm sitting here, nice and relaxed. My head is still hurting a little bit from all the noise in the street. It is a constant stream of loud talking and music and laughter and car horns and yelling and...and....it just never stops! I actually stood in the bathroom at Deannie's for an extra long time earlier because it was so quiet in there, and I needed a moment of peace.

 Tomorrow we have to sit through our time share thing and then we are going to go to Mardi Gras World, I think.