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After another cheap (and not very good) breakfast at McDonald's this morning, we set out on the 1-10 W from Mobile toward our final destination, New Orleans. The weather has turned up about 10 degrees in the past few days, so the car air conditioning was going full blast as we made our way through Mississippi. I saw a sign for (President of the Confederacy) Jefferson Davis' home (Beauvoir), so we decided to make a stop to get a picture. The home, located in Biloxi, was built in 1853 and was Davis' last residence. Due to heavy structural damage from Hurricane Katrina, the entire property is still undergoing renovations. As you can see in the pictures, there is still work to be done.
After our brief stop, we made the drive into New Orleans. We found and booked a Motel 6 ($44) in East New Orleans, but arrived too early to check in so we decided to drive around the area to view some of the damage from Katrina. The buildings and homes we passed seemed to all fit into one of two categories: brand new or completely demolished and boarded up. The homes down the street from our motel
Jefferson Davis Home
Beauvoir, located in Biloxi, Mississippiare rather luxurious, all completely rebuilt and made of brick. Further down the 1-10, however, you can see an endless stream of smaller homes, many still in various states of disrepair. No matter how many stories you've seen on television about what happened here, seeing it in person (and after it's been nearly three years) is still quite shocking.
By this point it was time to go back and check in, so we dropped off our luggage and drove to Canal Street to Harrah's. If you are a Total Rewards member at their casino, you can park at the casino lot and get free parking validation (for up to 24 hours). We took advantage of this, since parking in New Orleans is quite expensive anywhere else. We walked over to the Riverwalk and ate at the food court there. I had cajun chicken strips, fries and a biscuit, and after we ate we walked out to look at the river and then made our way back to the casino to do some gambling (and also take advantage of their lovely air conditioning...it is HOT here!). I doubled my money in the first 20 minutes and decided to stop while
Jefferson Davis
President of the Confederacy I was ahead. Afterward we headed out to Bourbon Street to maneuver through the crowds of drunk tourists. Watching people makes fools of themselves is really quite entertaining! The street still looks pretty much the same as I remember it from our trip here 9 years ago. I'm sure we'll be spending much of our next three nights around the area so we just wandered down the street and returned to the casino to gamble a little more before heading back to the hotel. This time around my luck wasn't quite as good, so we cut our losses and called it a night.
Tomorrow we have a few hours to kill before we can check into our other hotel (the Best Western St. Christopher) so we're going to drive around some other parts of the city before heading back to the French Quarter. I'm so excited to be here in the Big Easy...it's definitely my second favorite city (after NYC).
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Michael
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I love the pictures of Bourbon Street all lit up by the neon signs, they're great. And well done for managing to leave the casino while ahead, I'm glad you went back though, it'd have been far too grown up to leave with a complete profit :D