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Published: April 13th 2011
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With our minds still set on Arizona – because we had such a great time and we love Arizona and everything around it – but we have to keep moving towards other cities and to other adventures. The next stop is the city of New Orleans. As everybody probably knows this city was hit by hurricane Katrina 6 years ago and they are still rebuilding a lot of the stuff that got destroyed in the storm. Some people fortunately managed to make a good business out of showing tourist the places that were hit by hurricane Katrina with everything what survived and the big empty places where once people lived. After arriving in New Orleans we first went to our hotel and because it was still quite early, we went to look at its famous French Market. When you ask about New Orleans here in the US everybody the first (and often only) place that comes to mind is this, so we were curious about it. In this French quarter people dance, sing or play some instrument. Everywhere - on the streets, boats and restaurants we could hear jazz, jazz and jazz again. Old ladies (fortune tellers) were luring tourists in
to predicting their future – that would be something for my mum! 😊)) Or at the Mississippi river you can take a cruise by an original old boat. These streets, this market was really alive! 😉 We decided to have a good dinner and went for a seafood restaurant. For first time in my live (Dari) I ate oysters, fried oysters and they were....... hmmm.....I can still taste them....they were delicious 😉 As appetizer we ordered salad, seafood salad of course 😉 which was also great. Our waitress was named Destiny, probably not her real name, thought Europe is a place somewhere in the south of the USA. I don't know what she mend really, but it was soooo hard to understand her that I gave up. All people from New Orleans talk differently and sound very funny to us. Joost made fun of them but in the end he talked a bit like them Oh, I should publish it before he will read this and delete it.... 😊
Anyway, after dinner we walked trough the French quarter until well after sunset. That's when Bourben street came alive and all the people came out to party. We sat in some
bar and enjoyed margarita, bier and of course live jazz.
The next day we were walked through the quarter again, the weather was wonderful and temperature higher. We were looking forward to see their french market which we have been heard was beautiful. I imagined the real french baguettes (finally some good bread), cheeses , wine, fruits....and what I saw were t-shirt with “I love New Orleans”, hats and tourist things. It was a bit disappointing for us.
The other thing what Louisiana is known are swamps and alligators. So we booked a swamp tour. But before that we just relaxed at the river, enjoyed the sun and the street shows going on in and around the French quarter. There were 4 guys making fun from people walking around and showing some break dance. At the end of the show they choose 6”volunteers” - me included.... Of course they made fun of us, we had to do some exercising and dance. At the end one of them finally jumped over all of us. The show was short and they talked more than they danced, but they made lots of money with these show mostly by talking it out of the
tourist pockets. When we got to the swamps it was already late in the afternoon so most tourists were gone. Our guide, lets call him Jimmy, was cool and a bit crazy I would say. Jimmy had a small problem with counting the people on his boat, but he has been living around swamps all his live, he loves alligators and everything around this. I think we were one of the last boats leaving from the dock and not all of us were successful seeing alligators. Not everyone had Jimmy, we did!! 😊
Jimmy took us around, showed us the best places for seeing alligators and showed us a bird, the most expensive bird I know living in swamps, which costs thousands of dollars. Of course Joost made up his mind and with Jimmy started to make a business plan. 😊 We weren't alone on the boat so we had to continue...without the bird. We have seen a boathouse which was taken by hurricane Katrina and was dropped by the surging waters a few kilometers away where the hurricane and floods created new swamp areas by breaking the river banks. After this all we finally found the alligators. Jimmy was
prepared and brought some sausages and marshmallow. Yep, I am not crazy, he really brought marshmallow. By making some strange noises the alligators came to our boat and enjoyed the marshmallows 😉 Jimmy made a great time on boat for everybody with his stories, thanks Jimmy!.
It was after sunset when we got back to the city and because the next day we had to wake up very early (4:00am) to catch our train to Washington D.C. we just walked around and listened Jazz.
Yes, our next stop is city of politicians, education, museums and memorials of the most important men in American history.
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pawlas
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WTF?:-D
What you doing Dari?:-)