American Phive-Oh #4

Move over Budapest. Sorry Pokhara. On your bike Marrakech. New Orleans has stormed into first place on my favourite city list. I have to admit though, I’m a slut for a town with countless bars in which excellent music is being played excellently all day every day and the beers are icy and huge as in Huge Ass Beers. There are other things in life that are more important but I can’t think of any right now.

I thought #3 in this series was going to be the Big Easy wrap-up, but I keep thinking of more Cultural Learnings of America aka Borat. For example, the only place in Australia where you can guarantee the presence of an ATM is in a casino. Here every bar has one. They don’t want you to gamble but they certainly want you to drink. And cash is obviously king. Speaking of gambling, it’s illegal in Louisiana. Which explains the humongous Ceasars casino in the down town area – not. You have to give it to the locals – gambling is banned so they call it “gaming”. And the powers-that-be allowed that rather obvious loophole to ride. You have to ask yourself why. We’re now leaving Louisiana heading for Mississippi then Memphis so no more f…s will be given in this regard.

We’re now looking forward to seeing a hill. We haven’t seen one since Denver a week ago. I used to visit Calcutta regularly and was convinced that one day it would disappear into the swamp on which it appeared to be built. New Orleans is below swamp-level so the odds are that it will achieve oblivion before Calcutta. And as far as the landscape is concerned, “land” is a misnomer. It’s mostly water. Driving north past (through?) Lake Pontchartrain and we appear to have been on a bridge for the last half hour and that’s not the actual bridge over the lake which is apparently the longest continuous bridge over water in the world.

So now we’re heading for a change of scenery as the water seems to be receding and we’re back on dryish land. However there’s a lot to be said for sitting with a cold beer in a hot climate watching the world go by with good music all around. However spare me the appalling short pyjama fashion that some men appear to have adopted and I don’t want to ever see one of Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” violently twerking, again, ever.