New Orleans

New Orleans has surprised me the most out of every place I have visited. It is not at all what I thought it would be. Lots of parts are dirty and by dirty I don’t mean just dirty, I mean grungy, sleezy, and smelly. Bourbon St. has good drink deals but it also has whore houses with graphic pictures on the windows and girls in panties and bras standing in the door ways. Usually that would not bother me but these girls were not girls I would want to look at naked, enough said on that. Neon signs everywhere, drink specials everywhere, its just not what I expected. I expected lots of jazz clubs and old men playing the sax, delicious food everywhere. The French quarter is a shame, the houses/ buildings are so cute and designed but are run down, nobody lives in them and its scary to walk down the streets. A block away is a nice area with statues and parks and nice restaurants. Frenchman St. is where most of the music is. All in all, not my favorite place.

I do like this hostel, its awesome. I met Ali from London and Gabbi from Australia, Oscar from London and Adam from London, among others. Yesterday Gabbi, Oscar, and I went to breakfast and got out meal bought for us by an older couple who were intrigued by our accents (I guess I have a California accent) and loved how we met. After that we went to check out the 9^th ward, which is the place Katrina hit the hardest. It was eerie, some houses are completely destroyed still, broken, half of the house missing, and X’s on the outside of them, meaning fatalities. But some houses are rebuilt and look beautiful, even saw a brand new Benz in the drive way of one, but it is not a good area. It was sad to see.

Gabbi was off to Baton Rouge so Oscar and Adam and I had a great day and night. We took the trolley to City Park where there is a lake, amusement park, StoryTown, a sculpture garden, and botanical garden, and a café. We spent hours there. I absolutely love their accents and the diction they use.

Storytown, wow, I turned into a little girl for a minute. All the fairytales were turned into reality. Peter pan was on the huge ship, Snow White was passed out outside of the drwarfs houses, the three little pigs were outside of their house with a sign that said “made of brick” and so much more. We walked for ages.

After hours of being in the park we went to Bourbon St to get cheap beers. At about 9 pm we stumbled upon a wonderful live band where we danced for about an hour or two and had long islands. Adam and I left to go to a different place, we met a Dutch singer on the way and she came with us and we met other people from the hostel at a place called Mimi’s. It was red and local and had live music that was awesome. Then we came back to the hostel and all sat in the common room and met more people from around the globe.

Today I’m off to Denver, Colorado to meet up with my friends that I went to Bonnaroo and Electric Forest with and to see a place I have never seen.