Nawlins Day 1

At the end of August, Robert and I took a vacation to New Orleans.

It was amazing. Neither one of us had ever been so it was fun to be able to experience it together.

Because I work overnight weekends Robert came to work with me (and slept) and as soon as I got out at 6 am we hit the road. Well, he hit the road...I slept.

That is my Morph from Disney's Treasure Planet. 

Somewhere outside of Houston I finally woke up and we decided to stop at a rest stop and eat some lunch before trekking through Louisiana. We found a nice one to sit and eat our lunch.

After a few more hours we finally made it to New Orleans at about 2pm. Having used and relied on our GPS  we found it hard to get to our hotel. They were fixing, tearing up, and just overall making a mess of streets downtown. It took us about an hour to figure out how to get to our hotel and park. We stayed at a Wyndham Garden Hotel close to the French Quarter.

The parking there was TERRIBLE! As I learned when I made the hotel reservations parking is not free when you stay in overly populated New Orleans. So we had to pay a fee to park our car but being that our hotel used to be a mall, the parking lot was quite small. It was basically the basement to the hotel and the in ramp has a button you have to push that allows the guard arm to swing up and allow you and your car through. However, the button is at such an odd angle that I had to jump out of the car and push the button and then jump into the backseat really quickly because it was physically impossible for Robert to push it from the driver's seat.

Then! There's the whole process of parking. There is only one way in and out so you have to be careful not to gun it and end up running head on into someone else's car. The parking spaces were so tightly packed that each and every pillar and corner down there had padding on it for the many hits, bumps, and scratches.

I'm just sorry I didn't take a picture of it or our room. But the room was great! And they have the best, most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. I wanted to bring it home with me.

Anyway, after getting settled in we decided to go visit a sandwich shop we had seen Anthony Bourdain talking about. He didn't eat at the same place we did but he did have the same sandwich and because Mother's is the original, we decided to try it out there.

From our hotel walking to Mother's was about a 7 minute trek. It was drizzling that day but it wasn't very bad and it stopped after we finished eating. When we got to the restaurant we had to wait in line for about 15 minutes before ordering but according to those who are regulars, sometimes the line can be out the door. We decided to split the Debris Sandwich which is what they are most known for.

It was completely and totally delicious. Debris is basically all the left over, fallen chunks of roast beef and gravy. It is every bit as tasty as it sounds.

Eager to tour around we started walking towards Bourbon Street. We ended up hitting Harrahs, the casino. I have been to Las Vegas many times and went last year so I already had first-hand knowledge of the depressing and addicting nature of gambling but Robert had never gambled so we decided to waste gamble 10$.

It took us a good 15 minutes to figure out how to work their weird change machine and a good 5 seconds to lose the 10$. I prefer video poker to slot machines because it makes me feel like I have some sort of control over my gambling destiny. Still, I'm no poker player so I lost my money in about 10 seconds.

Goodbye sad, depressing casino where I hope one day to hit the jackpot. 

We started walking up the street towards Bourbon street but realized that because we were in New Orleans and not say, Texas, we could actually DRINK on our way to DRINK on Bourbon. In Texas, we're not allowed to walk around with open containers. Here, we have to order drinks in bars or restaurants and then FINISH them before walking out. Also, the only place we can get liquor is at a liquor store none of this crazy CVS, Walgreens, random gas-station-behind-the-counter stuff. We walked a total of 2 feet and arrived at this place where they make adult slushies. Tons of flavors with tons of liquor.

We ended up at the Crescent City Brewhouse instead. Not only was their beer delicious but so was...their oysters! Neither Robert nor I had ever eaten oysters before. We decided that New Orleans would be a great place to try them but we were a bit apprehensive about digging into them raw so we started with their Baked Oysters Three Ways.

They were seriously delicious. My favorite were the crab. Totally stuffed on seafood and beer we continued walking trying to walk off the calories we had consumed. We wandered around the French Quarter looking at all their eclectic shops and eateries.

It eventually got dark and I got sleepy since I had only had about 4 hours of sleep. And on our way back to the hotel even though we were totally full and couldn't eat another bite, we decided to stop at Cafe du Monde because why the hell not?

And it was totally fbang worth it.