Buzz Buzz Buzz! There goes the alarm at 3 am. So early in the morning! We got packed up quickly and headed to the airport. It was a slow process at ticketing at 4 am. We kept waiting for things like security to be open. Finally we got through everything and hopped on a plane for
Bye bye
After flying back to Burlington, VT, we headed back to Montreal and were very tired.
What a fun trip!
In the photo above, the turtle is staring down the alligator. We weren't sure what was going on, but they got in the water and seemed to swim quite happily together.
The tour was a lot of fun. We got introduced to the area called Barrataria by a local, a true louisian who was missing his front teeth. He explained about the people’s ways of life down there. A lot of people catch fish, shrimp, and alligators for a living. We looked around at the different scenery and spotted a lot of wildlife. We saw a great blue heron, an egret, turtles, and even… alligators! The alligators weren’t very big though, since the bigger ones are in hibernation. They looked to be about three feet long. At one point we saw a turtle sitting on a branch and staring at an alligator. The alligator looked like it was staring right back at him.
Just when we think all the crazy stuff on the boat tour is over, the tour guide pulls out a little alligator that he had stashed for us to see. Everyone got to take turns holding the alligator. It was a nice calm alligator and seemed to not mind people holding it at all.
After the tour was over, we went back to
For a final night out, we went back to the piano bar again. This time they had a funny guy who was playing rhythm on a metal tray by tapping it with his fingers. It was once again a very good time.
Oh, and randomly, here is a picture of one of the beer places on bourbon street that we passed:
Today we did a trip to the Audubon Zoo. We hopped on this old trolley/street car thing and went across town. Wow, was the streetcar ever noisy, and slow. It was like if you put a giant wooden box on the ground and dragged it around with a rope. The street car went along St. Charles which is the main parade route. As a result there were so many trees filled with beads.
We got off at
The zoo was very fun! We got to see all kinds of cats including white tigers, lions, jaguars, and bobcats. The foxes were extremely cute. Two grey foxes were cuddling each other, while one red fox was running around and teasing another red fox. I guess it must have been a chilly day for the animals because they were cuddled up with one another. All of the bobcats were licking each other, and the otters were wriggling around and cuddling each other. We also saw huge tortoises, monkeys, gorillas, elephants, and giraffes. One of the gorillas was lying back with his legs up the wall and giving us a look like “I am really bored”.
After one big streetcar ride back, we were completely streetcar-ed out. We did however get to see huge houses on the way. They were all built in a style that has big pillars out front of all the houses and have lots of balconies.
We wanted to try oysters, so we went to an Oyster Bar and ordered a dozen and a half oysters on the half shell. They were huge! We were expecting little ones, but some of these oysters were almost as big as fried eggs. We both liked the oysters. They were especially good with lemon and a bit of cocktail sauce on them, but they were really slippery on their way down our throats.
This evening we went out for jazz. First, we visited Pat O’Brien’s again to see their dueling piano bar, which had sounded intriguing. It was very neat! There were two pianos on the stage and they had a tonne of music on them. They would play requests from people. As we came in they played classic songs like “Hotel California” and “House of the Rising Sun”. Some silly guy kept yelling out “Free bird!” And they were like umm noooo. The pianists sang along with all of their songs. They must have been really good at improvisation and sight-reading.
After O’Brien’s, we went down the street to hear a local jazz band. They had a trombonist, bassist, pianist and drummer, and called themselves “Jumbo Shrimp”. We were sitting right in the front row and got to hear a lot of neat music. They were impressive too! They played and sang “Girl From Impanema” without ever having played it before.
The funny thing about the evening was that it was a Thursday, two days after Mardi Gras. Walking down Bourbon street was a little less crowded but still happening. There were probably ten bars with live music that night.
There we found the Audubon Aquarium and IMAX. First we visited the aquarium. It was amazing! When you walk in, you go through this tunnel where people are feeding stingrays. There were huge fish too. We saw so many types of fish, seahorses, stingrays, penguins, and jellyfish. One of the neatest fish was definitely the Lionfish. It was white and brown poisonous fish with a lot of little fins coming off of it. We also saw an alligator gar which was a big fish with huge scales and a nasty looking jaw. It was interesting to see how fine a jellyfish’s tentacles were. It looked like the older jellyfish got, the more tangled up they got.
For lunch we went to “Bubba Gump” which was a Forrest Gump themed restaurant. It was a fun place where they come up and ask you trivia about the movie and the waiters are very attentive. Too bad we haven’t seen Forrest Gump for at least 5 years. We tried some shrimp etouffe in Louisiana-style gravy, and “Bucket of Trash” which was a mix of fried shrimp, fish, and crab claw. It was great.
Next we saw the IMAX film “Hurricane in the Bayou”. It was all about people trying to save the wetlands rolled in with Hurricane Katrina happening. It was interesting and sad. The wetlands are currently eroding away due to levees that were built to stop the
This was definitely a day of rest. All of the crazy partiers had left and the streets were way emptier. A lot of McDonald’s was eaten, and a lot of Olympics was watched this day by us.
Watching the Olympics bit by bit was making us realize that these games were too hard. Everything was like the Olympics, except with an extreme twist. Here’s all the crazy stuff we had noticed and heard about:
We woke up this morning to a large parade going on outside the hotel. As we walked along the street we were interrupted by another small parade of a bunch of old guys dressed in white and musicians giving out gold beads. Apparently they were called the “Half-fast Walking Club” whose name was toned down from the original “Half-Assed Walking Club” name.
Next we crossed the street to see the “Zulu” parade. Everyone on the floats was dressed up in African garb and was wearing facepaint and throwing coconuts, feathery spears, and beads into the crowd. Katie had been eyeing these plushie roses for a while, and managed to grab one luckily. The big colours for this parade were black and gold.
One of the funniest things was watching beads and bags of beads being thrown at people that weren’t paying attention. You hear, “Thwack!” and “Ohhhhh” as the crowd sympathizes with someone who just got a bag of beads in the head. Some of those prizes get thrown pretty hard!
After more beads, it was lunch time, and time to compare a gumbo with a jambalaya. They are actually similar it seems. They both had rice, sausage, chicken, etc, but the jambalaya seemed to be way more tomato-y while the gumbo had a more green pepper-ish tinge to it and was saltier. Both were great.
We wandered out in time to see “Rex” the king of Carnival just in time. This was the main parade for the week.
During the afternoon and evening we traveled more down
At O’Brien’s later, the green power ranger offered to let Stew try it on, but Stew’s glasses fell off and we searched for about 10 minutes for them. They were a bit scratched and stomped on by the time we found them, but still wearable. Poor Stew! The power ranger guy was really sorry.
It turns out Katie is a really good crowd navigator. She could push through any crowd and was moving at least twice the speed everyone else trying to navigate the crowd was moving at.
At midnight, everyone was ushered offDrip drip… Bang bang! Cracklecracklecrackle. It was raining on the skylight at 3 am. And it was noisy! It sounded like the whole building was wrenching itself apart. The worst part was the constant dripping… straight on top of the bed and us! We had noisy, leaky windows.
After a restless night, we woke up and had breakfast. Then we promptly changed rooms into a normal room.
It was now time to do a little daytime
Lunch time! It was time to try a local sandwich variety called the “Po Boy” which must be short for poor boy. It is a long sandwich on a bun, with meat, tomatoes, lettuce, and pickles. Stewart tried his with alligator sausage, while Katie had catfish. Both were extremely tasty.
In the evening we bundled up to go see the “Proteus” parade. The theme seemed to be some sort of under the sea theme with lots of seahorses. Again came the floats with beads and toys flying out of them. The colours of this parade were red and silver. Stew managed to grab a stuffed animal seahorse with Proteus written on it. Very cute. We also caught some special beads with seahorses on them.
We tried some more interesting cuisine for dinner, including a bowl of gumbo, and a fried oyster Po Boy sandwich. Those fried oysters are rich!
After more wanderings in the French Quarter, we were left with a super grumpy Katie because of all of the crowds. Katie isn't a fan of massive crowds. People were everywhere and bumping into each other, beads were flying at your head, and combining that with the horrible sleep the previous night, Katie was getting irritable.
We then went to the Tropical Isle hut, were everyone was perked up. We drank these crazy tropical refreshing drinks that were called “Hand Grenades”, a drink which is marketed as the strongest drink in New Orleans. They were in tall plastic glasses with a diabolical looking smiley face on them, and garnished with a plastic grenade. They definitely sound more intimidating than they taste.
Bed time!
We woke up at 9 today and went to our special executive floor breakfast. Yum! They had tasty breakfast burritos for us and lots of fruit and pastries. Now it was time for us to check out those parades. As we read a pamphlet, we quickly learned that there were a tonne of parades in the next few days, each with a different sort of theme and flavour.
We wandered up
After the parade, it was time to enjoy snacks and drinks at the executive lounge in the hotel. They had lots of hors d’oeuvres for us to eat.
Now it was time to check out
All around, there were bars and pubs. They even had takeout drinks! You were allowed to take your drinks onto the street as long as they were not in glass containers. We went to a neat bar called “Pat O’Brien’s” where we tried a crazy drink called the “Hurricane”. It was very red, and strong, but also very tasty and refreshing.
Now it was dinnertime, so we headed into a restaurant on
It was time to call it a night, so we retreated to our hotel.
Today we packed up and set off at about noon to drive to
When we hit Burlington, we grabbed a bite to eat at what looked like a local diner, called “Al's French Frys” or something like that. They were speedy and had extremely tasty fries and chilidogs.
After that we parked the car and started the unnecessarily long waiting process that is needed for air travel. We had elected to get there fairly early because we weren't sure how long the border crossing would take and we ended up waiting about 5 hours. Through security, Katie was searched due to the ridiculous amount of coins in her purse. Apparently there were so many, that they figured she could hide a gun or toenail clipper or something like that in there. After flying through Washington Dulles, we headed on a new plane to New Orleans.
When we landed the flight attendant welcomed us to the “who dat nation” having something to do with the Saints winning the Superbowl. We got there about 1 am, and waited and waited for our suitcase, but they never loaded it on the carousel. There had to be at least 15 people waiting in the lost luggage line with us, and there was only one guy to deal with each person, one at a time, in about 15 minute increments. We kept joking about the agents “secret stash” of luggage that he had in the room behind him. After waiting about an hour with grumpy people, we went to see the guy, and voila! He somehow had our bag with his super secret luggage stash. We were lucky, and had no clue why it was there.
Finally, we got out of that airport, and asked the taxi driver some questions along the way. He explained to us that “who dat” is part of the Saint’s cheer “Who dat say we gonna beat those Saints. Who dat! Who dat!” and that everyone is still celebrating after the Superbowl.
We rolled downtown to the
