My First Trip to New Orleans

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you are having a fabulous day filled with stretch pants and gravy stains on your shirt. However, this is not a Thanksgiving post. I don’t cook or do anything out of the ordinary on Thanksgiving, so I guess I am just thankful for my average, everyday, boring life. It’s pretty great.

Now on to other things.

Some serious anti-training went down last weekend. Actually, it’s been going down for two weeks. Why I thought it was a good idea to sign up for a half marathon on Thanksgiving weekend right after a vacation is beyond me. It’s almost as smart as the time I ran a half marathon in Vegas. But I’ll whine about that another day. Today is all about New Orleans.

Hubs and I were in NOLA to celebrate our friend Jamie’s birthday. Fifteen of her friends flew out for her birthday and we knew exactly three of them. On top of that, Jamie and her hubs, Ken, are newer friends of ours so we were a little nervous at first since we didn’t know anyone really well and weren’t sure how it would go.

Well, it started out pretty good even before leaving the airport.

(From left: Ken, Earl, Jamie, Hubs)

A bunch of us were on the same flight, so Jamie arranged for us to be picked up at the airport…in a stretch Escalade.

With champagne.

(From the back: Laser-eyes Earl, Bryan, Ken, Mark, Hubs, Me, and Ashley (Mark’s gf and Jamie’s BFF))

You got all these new names and relations? There will be a test later.

We stayed at the J.W. Marriott on Canal Street, which is about a block away from Bourbon Street. (Hint: Check the closet for the hair dryer. I had crap hair for two days until I figured that one out.)

Once we all settled into the hotel, we met for dinner and hit up Bourbon Street.

After dinner at Oceana, we walked over to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, the last bar at the end of Bourbon Street. Everything after this place is residential. It’s also America’s oldest bar.

In fact, I’m not even sure they had lights. I looked and couldn’t find any. The entire place was pitch black at night and lit only by candles so I didn’t take any pictures inside, but it was definitely a cool place.

After Lafitte’s, we made our way to the Old Opera House, which did not play opera by the way. Unless Van Halen is the new opera.

(From left: Ken, Nate, Rich, Ed, Bryan)

(Jamie and hubs. Seriously, how cute is she?)

At Old Opera House, you can find a shot girl that looks exactly like Uma Thurman. In fact, when I mentioned it to her, the look on her face said that she hears it all the time. I wish I had gotten a picture with her, but she started telling me all about her finances which was fairly awkward, and there’s just no good way segueway from that.

After the Opera House, some street shenanigans occurred. New Orleans is like Vegas in that you can walk around anywhere with a drink, which I think is so awesome that if I met a genie, I might make that one of my three wishes for Orlando. So, when we weren’t inside some establishment, we walked around and checked out the crazies.

This guy is not walking across the street. He’s just standing completely still in that position.

Until somehow we became the crazies.

Bryan took his shirt off for beads.

And then my favorite picture of the trip happened.

By the way, Nate is wearing a shirt with a picture of a moose with a moustache that says “Moosestach.” That shirt sealed my love for him.

The next day, we walked around the city.

There was a whole area with awesome local art for sale. I wanted these paintings of cats holding random objects SO bad but they were $85 each.

Seriously. I want those cat paintings.

We took a donkey-drawn carriage tour of the city and learned a bunch of history about the different buildings and the city as a whole. The carriage tour included a stop at Lafitte’s for a Hurricane. < — can this city GET any better?

And then we were ready for dinner and another night on the town, but this is getting long so I’ll finish this up in my next post.

I honestly had so much fun. I laughed so hard and so much every day that my face hurt. And I met so many new, cool, and completely different people that I can now call friends. I had a really great Jamie’s birthday. 🙂