OH! And you should try and see if you could catch a Marc Gunn gig. Although he’s in Ireland right now.
Disclaimer: Marc is like, totally my best friend and shit
Thanks again guys for the ideas.
Sorry Rimbo, Marc Gunn won’t be in town it appears - otherwise I’d probably check him out. Skedastic, I appreciate the suggestion, but Stella!! looks to be too rich for our blood - that appears to be $100+ for dinner for two.
I think we’re going to do the following in July:
Sunday - Fly in (2:00 PM), hit the tourism center, walk around, get something to eat and then do an after-dark haunted cemetery tour
Monday - French Quarter, shopping, Cafe du Mond, jazz club at night
Tuesday - Cooking class, St. Charles streetcar then something else (Mardi Gras place, WWII museum, Harrah’s Casino). Probably go to bed somewhat early that night because…
Wednesday - Flying out first thing in the AM
Well, we’re back. And my wife and I both agree…New Orleans fucking sucks. I jest, I jest…well, only partially. It was one of those trips where nothing major goes wrong, but almost everything minor gets screwed up.
To give you an idea how bad it got, Cafe du Mond was fucking closed (equipment failure) and this is a place open 24/7. It was the kind of trip where you go to take the shuttle for Mardi Gras World and the damn thing pulls away empty when you’re 10 feet from it and waving at the driver. Or the type of trip when you want to take the St. Charles streetcar and it breaks down. Or when you try to go to the IMAX, Aquarium or Insectorium and find that they’re all closed. Or when your haunted tour guide is so boring you walk away halfway through the tour. Or when the legendary cooks of New Orleans don’t even have the ingredients to make the stuff on their menu (twice!). Or when you want to use the hotel pool and find that they’ve emptied it for repairs and it takes two days to fill it back up.
And so on and so forth. Not to mention that Hell would seem air conditioned compared to New Orleans during summer, or that the sewage/garbage smell hits you in the face every block and a half or that there’s a panhandler/bum/hustler sitting at every corner who mumbles threats (or occasionally screams) at you if you don’t give them money.
I do give the people of New Orleans a lot of credit, though. They’re very proud of their city. They make a huge production over Riverwalk, a low-end shopping mall with 20 T-Shirt shops. Their New Orleans market is highly touted in all the brochures and it’s smaller than the local flea market (and less interesting too). Their antiques on Royal Street are supposedly world-famous, but you can find better prices (and selection) at an auction sale. And the music is famous even though you can’t find a decent band on Bourbon Street. And they say their architecture is marvelous, especially when it’s rusting or graffiti-covered. The Casino is featured prominently and compares with some of the nice Indian Casinos I saw out in Colorado earlier this year. Yes, they’re very proud of their city in the swamp. More power to 'em.
Actually, it wasn’t all that bad. We did have a good time at the cooking school and we had a good meal in the Marriott Hotel. I guess ya gotta experience it once. Came, saw and got the t-shirt but you’d actually have to pay me to go back. Of course, the upside is that I did have plenty of time with the wife in the hotel room, so that was great.
Sorry to hear that. I’m heading over there Sunday and will be there until Friday. I know the weather is going to be hellish. I did get bumped from the Marriott to the Ritz Carlton, so maybe my accommodations will at least be nice.
What is wrong with people who take their small children to Bourbon Street?
Actually, that’s a rhetorical question, because I know what’s wrong with them. They haven’t accepted the fact that they have children now and can no longer live the same life they had before. That means that they’re going to have to skip some adult experiences like visiting with the strippers outside Little Darlings. Instead they’re going to have to visit sites that are a bit more family friendly.
Unless they want to go to hell.