Where to start. Now I think I know how Borat felt when he had a chance to catch his breath after hitting these shores. The cultural overload down here makes New York seem like The Truman Show. Sorry for the references to two American films. If you’ve seen them, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not….so be it. Anyway, I’m feeling inspired. I’ve been around this big old world (is that a song lyric?) and seen a thing or two but I ain’t seen nothing like this place with its bars and music and restaurants and it’s human zoo.
Speaking of a human zoo, I’m going to be a bit (factually) nasty here. I’m not referencing anything that isn’t widely known (that’s enough caveats) but if the bald eagle is the national bird of this country then type 2 diabetes is the national disease. We did the hop on hop off bus yesterday and at one stop 10 people got off and the bus’s tyres rose about two inches. And love, you really shouldn’t be wearing those tight short shorts. But feel free to express yourself, both figuratively and literally. Look, i could do with losing a few kilos but in this country i feel positively svelte and the child bride could be a super model. All of those sweaty, squeaking, shaking thighs and cheeks must result in Curash being sold by the wheelbarrow. When you see the size of the meals they put in front of you, you understand why. I’m reminded of a roast beef sandwich I had in Times Square many years back. There were horns sticking out of one end and a tail from the other. And directly across Bourbon Street from our hotel is Huge Ass Beers. Says it all really.
While on the subject of food (and drink), the child bride and I had a very nice meal in a restaurant called Antoine’s (around since 1840). We were advised they have a dress code – jackets for blokes. It wasn’t policed to the extent that one bloke was wearing shorts and there were a few groups of very casually dressed young men dining and, I might add, behaving impeccably. Contrast that with the female groups (two bridal parties and four birthday groups) we encountered in various bars, both seedy and seedless. They were mostly “fine dining” shots and enjoying themselves at volume 11. Bit of roll reversal going on here.
If you don’t like drinking, there’s weed everywhere – the smell is unavoidable and after a few days, it’s in your clothes. The French Quarter is not the drug induced dystopian zombie world of some cities but I suspect in most places that attract large numbers of tourists, that is only tolerated in the less attractive parts of town. But weed doesn’t turn people into motionless, twisted lamp stands the way fentanyl does. And I suspect all of those competing sounds and masses of people frequenting numerous bars and clubs are incompatible with a slow, quiet crack-induced demise.
So you come to a place expecting to be on alert the whole time, and I guess to some extent you should be, but it’s been pretty cruisy so far. We finished up in Frenchmen Street last night which ironically is outside the French Quarter (hard to believe, I know) and where the locals go to party. It’s quite a walk back to our hotel, the Royal Sonesta in Bourbon Street but we did it and still had enough energy to visit a bar (called the Drinkery – got to love it) where a very loud rock band was playing our 60’s and 70’s music – Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix – plus a lot of driving blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rory Gallagher style. That was a perfect way to finish stage 1 of this trip. Next comes the first organised tour part of this trip. We’re not quite finished with NOLA but in a couple of days we start our sojourn into the musical heartland as we make our way up through Memphis to Nashville.