NOLA

 I went on a girls trip!! Oh my goodness, it was so fun. DeAnna and I had been planning it for maybe 3/4 of a year last year. She kinda said, "sooo, since we are both turning 35 in the next year, I think we should go on a girls trip!" We invited Sarah to come with us, and a number of other women, who couldn't make it work. So it just ended up being the 3 of us. 

We discussed all the different places we could go, but landed on New Orleans. None of us had ever been there, and we all thought it could be really fun. 

We spent a few weeks during December planning what we wanted to do, and Sarah and DeAnna made all the reservations for us. 

I made arrangements for mom and dad to come watch my kids for that weekend. They drove 2 days to get here, because of weather and road closures, and I felt so bad that I'd even asked them to come in the dead of winter. They were very kind and gracious about it, though. They said they couldn't pass up an opportunity to be with the kids. 

Our flight left midday Thursday, January 6th. It was so strange to be going somewhere without my kids. But also, travel was so easy!! We didn't get to sit with each other on the plane. But that was okay. I dozed off a bit and read a book. 

Our first night there, after getting settled into our hotel (which was on Canal Street, right on the edge of the French Quarter of downtown New Orleans), we wandered right into the area of New Orleans we were supposed to stay away from. Apparently, Bourbon Street is major sketch. We were told that as 3 women, by ourselves, we shouldn't be wandering down Bourbon Street. We didn't really know where we were going, so it was totally by accident. And when we were walking down the street, we each, individually, were feeling very uncomfortable, slightly nervous, and thinking to ourselves, "what have we gotten ourselves into?!?" 

We walked around trying to find a place to eat, and eventually stopped at a place on Bourbon Street. We ordered very New Orleans food: fried alligator, jambalaya, gumbo, and rice and red beans. It was all delicious. We were surprised by how much we liked the alligator, but the jambalaya was definitely the favorite. 

After dinner, we walked down a few streets and stopped to watch a Mardi Gras parade, the Joan of Arc parade, the first one this Mardi Gras season. It was quite an interesting experience. At one point, some guy randomly laid down in the middle of the street. He was clearly drunk, and they had to recruit a bunch of guys to pick him up and move him off the parade route. 

Also, people kept giving us stuff. I must have one of those faces, because I got way more than DeAnna or Sarah: French flag, necklaces, cards, tokens, etc.

One of the other sketch things that happened that first night was that random guys kept trying to hang beads around our necks, which is NOLA code for, "take off your shirt". One guy went for DeAnna first, and after she said, "No thank you," he came for me. I had to put my hand up to block him putting it over my head! It was a little creepy. 

We walked back to our hotel after the parade and just watched TV and talked until we went to bed. That first night of sleeping was extremely hard. One of my friends is... shall we say, a loud sleeper (something I had never even considered would be a problem... but I should've at least thought of it). I had a very hard time falling asleep, and then I was restless. 

At around 630am, after less than 6 hours of broken sleep, I woke up, and, knowing I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, got up and went to the gym. Sarah woke up too and joined me. I was glad to at least get that in before or day started. 

We walked down the street a ways to rent a car for the day, and drove out of the city for a while for a plantation tour. There were a number of plantations in the area; we went to Oak Alley Plantation. It was beautiful. The front entry is the main house was lined with dozens of huge, crazy old oak trees. The house was pink, and it had gardens, and it was lovely. We learned a lot about plantations, about growing and processing sugar, and about how slaves lived on the plantations. It was interesting and sobering.

We had lunch on the plantation: fried green tomatoes with some delicious shrimp sauce on it, and gumbo and crayfish ettoufee. It was delicious! 

Our next event was a swamp tour. We got in this old metal boat and had the most hysterical tour guide: an old 60s-70s year old man, all grizzled and hairy and telling stories and saying hilarious things. We saw a bunch of gators, some turtles, and even raccoons on the shore of the river. Our guide had a baby gator on the boat, and he brought it around to show us. We got to pet it! 

After our adventures, we drove back into the city and returned the car. We decided to walk to different places for dinner that night. We had soufflé potatoes, fried shrimp and appropriate drinks at some ritzy bar. Then we hopped down Bourbon Street to Cafe Beignet for our first sampling of beignets. 

This was possibly my favorite experience of the trip (it's hard to say, really. The whole thing was incredible). The atmosphere was just so good. It was an outdoor courtyard type situation, with cute Cafe lighting and tables and bronze statues of jazz players. We went to the very back of this courtyard to the little building to order our beignets, and then found a table right under an outdoor heater (it was so cold that day), right by a live jazz band. The band was so fun, the lights were so twinkly, the beignets were so warm and delicious. It was the perfect atmospheric experience, stimulating all 5 senses, and I just loved it. ❤️ 

We went to get a slice of pizza afterwards. We each got a piece and then shared all 3 with each other. It was the perfect dinner, and I'm still dreaming of those soufflé potatoes and Buffalo chicken pizza. So good! 

When we were done, we walked down to a voodoo shop for the start of our ghost tour. The ghost tour consisted of a tour guide (all dressed in black, with black lipstick, for effect, I'm assuming) walking a whole big group of us around the French Quarter, stopping at certain places and telling us rather creepy (sometimes grotesque) scary ghost stories. It was actually quite fun! There were a few times we had to huddle together, not just for warmth, but because we were creeped out! We also learned quite a lot of history of New Orleans, and because we were walking everywhere, we got to know the city pretty well that night. In the days that followed, we basically could navigate on our own around the French Quarter and know where we were. 

We got back to our hotel after our ghost tour and basically went right to sleep. This time we used a sound machine and we all slept easy better that night. 

The next day, we started out with a bus tour around the city, which was fascinating and so much better than we thought it would be. Our tour guide taught us history and culture of the city, told stories, pointed out architecture and gave us details about hurricane Katrina, which was so sad and sobering. We stopped at a cemetery, which was so interesting because they bury their people in New Orleans so differently than most cities do, because of the flooding that sometimes happens and because the land sits below sea level in most areas. We loved the bus tour! We learned so much! 

Our tour guide taught us that people from New Orleans (called "Yats") don't say, "hey, what's up?" "Not much." Their version of that greeting conversation is, "Where y'at?" And the proper response to that question is, "Yeah, ya right." What?! 😂😂😂 Thereafter, we kept saying that to each other. 

When our tour was done, we headed back to the French Quarter to wander around before our next appointment. We walked around Jackson Square and looked at the artists displaying their art, saw a historical 1850s house, went to the jazz museum for about an hour, did some window shopping and stopped at Cafe Du Monde for their famous beignets. They were better than the ones we had the night before, and completely delicious. 

We had a cooking class with the New Orleans cooking school. It was more of a demonstration, really. We didn't do any coming ourselves, but we learned how to make certain New Orleans dishes: creamy shrimp soup, crawfish ettoufee, and pralines. Sarah and I thought it was all delicious. DeAnna didn't like the ettoufee. We left with recipes to make them at home, and we each bought some of the spices he used in his food. 

That night we stayed in. I think we meant to just go back to the hotel to rest for an hour or so and then go back out. But we ended up just talking and snacking on junk food for hours into the night. And by the time we started getting hungry again, it was, like, 11pm, way too late to be going out to eat again. We had eaten so many snacks that we didn't really get hungry for real food until it was too late. And we stayed up for, like, 3 more hours after that! 🤦🏽‍♀️🙈

We were a little tired that next morning. 😂 We got up and ready (and missed church... we had planned to go to a catholic mass while we were there because church was farther away and earlier. There's a huge catholic presence in New Orleans.... But we took too long getting ready. It was a nice leisurely morning), and walked out to the bus stop, where we caught a bus to take us out to the Garden District. We had to take a bus and then a street car to get out to where we wanted to go. It was kinda fun riding the street car (no, it's not called a "trolley" in New Orleans. Don't get that wrong!). 

We went to famous Camellia's for Po Boys for lunch. It was an adorable place, just a little diner style place, but completely open inside. There was no back kitchen; all the grills and ranges were right there, and the cooks made the food right in front of us. We each got a different one and shared them. Our favorite was probably the fried shrimp one. 

After we finished, we walked around in the Garden District, looking at all the bigger, nicer houses of New Orleans. And we caught a street car and bus to take us back into the city. 

When we got back, we did the river walk, walking down a plaved path among the Mississippi River. The sun was setting, and it was beautiful. We explored a few places along the way, like Jackson brewery (a shopping center that we didn't stay long at), a drink bar where DeAnna got some kind of ice cream drink, and we also went to look at a bar that features in a TV show that DeAnna watched. 

We wandered around the French Quarter, looking for a good place to eat. We eventually stopped at a sports bar type place and had salads (because we had been eating so much rich food, we all felt like we needed to eat something a little healthier). Sarah and I got shrimp and scallops on our salads and shared, but we were kind of disappointed because at least 1/3 of the greens were wilted and going bad. It was kinda gross, but we tried not to complain too much. It seemed to us that people don't normally order salad when they come to New Orleans. 😆

We ordered bananas foster Beignet fries for dessert and they were AMAZING. So so good! 

We wandered over to a jazz bar that we'd seen at the beginning of the week, called Magnolia Jazz Bar. One of the things that both Sarah and I wanted was to experience some good jazz, and we were scouting out places from the very start. We finally, the last night we were there, went to listen to some jazz. The bar required us to buy drinks for every set of music, so we ordered something virgin and delicious; some kind of ginger beer based drink. It was good! The jazz was better. It was so fun. We listened and made comments and reminisced about the instruments we used to play in band. The band was fun and chatted with everyone and it was one of the more enjoyable experiences. 

We didn't stay too long at the jazz place; we stayed for one set, and then headed back to our hotel. We didn't stay up as late as the night before, but I think it was still after midnight. We stopped at a local CVS to stock up on snacks, played a few games and ate pretzels and m&ms.

Our last few hours in New Orleans were spent wandering the French Quarter, going back to Café Du Monde for another round of beignets and hot chocolate, shopping at the French Quarter Market, getting souvenirs for our people, and having another Po Boy, a muffalatta (which ended up being one of my favorite new foods from New Orleans) and crab cakes for lunch, touring through the old cathedral and hanging out in Jackson Square. 

We got everything packed up before we went out, so when we got to our hotel, we ordered an Uber, grabbed our bags and went to the airport. Our trip was over. 

It was so much fun! I loved every minute of it! We did so many cool and different activities, we experienced new things, ate new food and experienced a different culture. We spent time together and bonded, we got a break from our normal lives and the expectations everyone has of us, we talked and laughed, we were all happy, there was no drama or competition. We each were fully pleased with everything we did. It was perfect. And it's given me a newfound taste for girls trips. 😊😬

My impressions of New Orleans: 

• It's quite a raucous and lascivious town, full of mischief and debauchery. As we were walking down Bourbon Street, I looked up into a window and saw a room with dim lighting and... poles. 😬😬😬 It's all about drinking a ton, eating too much rich food, establishments of ill repute, and doing whatever one feels like doing. That first night we were there, I felt very uncomfortable, and wondered, "what have I gotten myself into? I certainly don't belong here. Because I'm not into debauchery."
• It's full of rich culture, which I absolutely loved. The food, the music, the general feeling of it was so different and fun. The history is so pervasive in the culture as well, and the architecture. Catholicism is very present, which is kind of ironic considering all of the debauchery.
• It's known as "The Big Easy" because of it's easy feeling and the kind of looseness that it emanates. 
• There are a lot of homeless people, one of the sad effects of hurricane Katrina. Also lots of crazy people. There was one woman that we saw literally every day we were there. It seemed she just hung out and wandered around the French Quarter, a real presence in the town. She wrote these bright flamboyant clothes, ruffley shirts and hats, and she just danced everywhere she went. She was there at the parade, there crossing the street to Café Du Monde, there on the streets. 
• There were also a ton of street performers and live jazz bands everywhere, which meant music no matter where we went. It was quite pleasant, really. 
• At the beginning of the trip, I was nervous about being there. At the end of the trip, I loved the feel of the town, despite the debauchery, and I loved the culture and food and music.