Day 19 - Memphis to New Orleans

Memphis to New Orleans - 33°c

After having a relatively chilled out day yesterday, alongside a fairly early night and a good night’s sleep, I woke up feeling very refreshed and ready for the long driving day ahead. Waking up at 7:15am, Scott and I got ourselves and all of our belongings ready and down for the coach departure at 7:45am.

I managed to doze off back to sleep again during the first two hours of the journey before we stopped off for a quick restroom break just on the Tennessee and Mississippi boarder. Another two hours into the journey we stopped off in Jackson, Mississippi for an hour for everyone to grab some lunch. Joey and I headed to Subway and I had a really good foot-long turkey and ham sub, being very hungry after missing out on a breakfast.

Joey and I bumped into Kristina in one of the shops, where she was looking for a birthday card for (Aussie) Michelle’s birthday today. Once back on the coach, she made mention of the fact that it was Michelle’s birthday and got her to go up to the front of the coach and have everyone sing to her. She presented her with a tacky plastic silver tiara and matching clip-on earrings that she told her she had to wear for the remainder of the day at all times! Kristina then passed around the card for us all to sign, which hopefully made for a really lovely souvenir for Michelle to have on her birthday and look back on in the future.

After another two-hour journey, just after passing the Mississippi and Louisiana state line, we stopped off for another quick restroom break. It was quite surreal that over the past 6 hours or so we’d been in 3 different states, Tennessee, Mississippi and now Louisiana, and still hadn’t quite arrived at our destination.

After leaving the state line, we crossed the 24-mile long bridge called Lake Pontchartrain causeway over Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The bridge was amazing and just went on and on across the ‘lake’, which really felt like an ocean! It’s actually the longest bridge in the world, and although nothing spectacular to look at; it just being a very simple straightforward bridge, it was none the less very impressive.
Soon after crossing it we reached New Orleans, and Jerry, our bus driver took us on a brief tour of New Orleans so that we could familiarise ourselves with the area, in particular the French Quarter. Kristina pointed out a load of sights, including the Louisiana Superdome, and regaled stories and history of what happened to New Orleans and the people here during hurricane Katrina back in 2005, how much damage was caused, and the impact on the many lives and livelihood of those living here, including the over 1800 people who died. On our trip around the area, we noticed that there was still so much restoration and building work going on to repair so much of the damage that was done.

After our brief tour of the area, we checked into our motel-style hotel on the outskirts of the Garden District area of New Orleans. Not a very fancy hotel to say the least, with the rooms being rather unusual in that they’ve each got two floors behind the room door, and in our room, Scott’s bed is on the ground and my bed is up a rather dangerous spiralling staircase! Still, for two nights, it will once again suffice, despite the fact that it’s a good 20°c hotter up in my area than it is on the ‘ground’!

We had about an hour and a half to get freshened up and ready before meeting the rest of the group down in the lobby of the hotel. Kristina led the way and walked us down to the tram stop a couple of blocks away, which we all boarded and rode for $1.25. It was quite a rickety, but cute thing really, like something from times gone by, but very much still active and in use! We got off the tram at the end of the line on Canal Street and walked the rest of the way to ‘Riverwalk’ ready for our Mississippi river jazz cruise. The majority of the group had signed up for this optional excursion, and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to spend a few hours aboard a steam-paddle boat cruising along the Mississippi river. Onboard were a live jazz band and a buffet of Cajun and South American cuisine. After the meal, we headed up to the top deck where the air was breezy for a change and cut through the humid night air. It was really beautiful to see New Orleans lit up at night, including the bridge over the Mississippi river and the skyscrapers of downtown.

Once the cruise was over, we disembarked and Kristina led the way to Bourbon Street, where we met up with those that hadn’t gone on the river cruise. We started off in a bar called Pat O’Brien’s, which was really unusual in that it was half set inside and half outdoors in a courtyard complete with water fountains and coloured spotlights. It was a really cool bar, and the frozen strawberry daiquiris were very good indeed! After we were there for a while, we spotted a group of guys who looked vaguely familiar from the Contiki Facebook group. It turned out to be the guys who are due to join us as we leave New Orleans in a couple of days time for the rest of the tour. - The ‘tour’ being made up of 3 different tours. The Grand Southern which runs from beginning to end from LA to New York, the Grand Adventure which ran from LA to New Orleans, and the Eastern Discovery which runs from New Orleans to New York. So whilst there are those we will be saying goodbye to here in New Orleans, there will be 14 others we shall be saying ‘Welcome’ to too!

After a couple of hours in Pat O’Brien’s, we headed to the ‘Tropical Isle’ bar, a fluorescent, clashing, neon, wild, crazy bar full of random décor like sharks hanging from the walls, legs dangling from the ceiling and all manner of surf and beach-style items in between.
It was really good in there, and the atmosphere was great with a live band in the background. Before too long as I was standing chatting to some of the girls, I looked around at where the band were playing and Lauren was up on stage singing along and she was amazing! She wasn’t singing karaoke style, but more a professional singer who had genuine talent. She sang song after song with them, and the band kept inviting her back for more, saying how great she was! It was really cool and I made sure that I took lots of photos, videos and whooped and cheered in support along with everybody else.

We stayed in there for a couple of hours, before finishing up in another bar a block or two down that others had headed to earlier on. We were only in there for around 30-minutes or so before the music was switched off and the lights came on to mark closing time, but it was good whilst it lasted. A few of the girls got up on stage and danced around whilst karaoke was going on in the background.

After that we all bundled into several taxis back to the hotel, with myself, Lauren, Marnee, Michelle, Danni and Karissa in one taxi with a driver called ‘Zee’ who thought we were all hilarious as we were singing and laughing throughout the journey.

Thankfully once back in the room around 3:30am, I managed to climb the spiralled staircase to where my bed is located without breaking a bone, falling to my death or something worse like waking up Scott who’d come back to the hotel a couple of hours earlier!

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Part of trip: Trip of a lifetime!

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