Goodbye Nola

So yesterday morning we arrived in New Orleans (or Nola as people call it, apparently). We came in through the Ninth Ward which was, obviously, pretty depressing. Most of the houses and buildings are still destroyed and people clearly haven't come back to them since Katrina. You can still see the X's on most of those houses, but there are a few where you can tell people tried to wash them off or paint over them. There are also a few houses strung throughout that are brand new. There really aren't many, but the new houses are actually pretty cute - if you don't look at their surroundings. There really is no other way to describe it besides devastated, because many of the streets and lots are completely overgrown and abandoned.

Then we headed over to the Garden District.. talk about polar opposites. These houses were GORGEOUS. Like, almost convinced me that I could live in New Orleans gorgeous. Of course I would have to be incredibly rich before I was willing to do that because that is the only way you can afford these homes. They were those perfect southern mansions, with sun rooms and walk-out windows. The streets are all lined with huge trees and the properties usually have palm trees mixed in as well. Even the sidewalks were beautiful, and sometimes custom made. We were hungry by the time we got to the Garden District, so walking a couple blocks in the heat made us starving and we headed over to the French Quarter.

The French Quarter is so awesome. People my age will hate me for saying this.. but it would be so much better if they had open container laws. I thought the same thing in Key West, and it's not because I'm against the partying it creates. Despite not being into partying myself, I think that is actually a cool part of both cities. What I don't find to be as cool are the drunk/high homeless people wandering the streets at all hours of the day. For example, we had one homeless guy virtually following us through the streets yesterday after sitting near us in a restaurant. No, he didn't eat there, and yes, he got kicked out within five minutes. He had a little dog with him, Geronimo, which actually was pretty cute and he kept playing with Kaos. This was really the only somewhat cool homeless guy we saw, and he was only acceptable because of his dog. The dog followed him everywhere and I'm pretty sure understood every word the guy said to him. Half way through the day he had to go buy another beer and the dog followed him into the store, which was also pretty cool. Oh well, it made the day slightly more interesting.

The architecture and food of New Orleans are both great. I didn't expect all of the streets to be so cute and interesting. There are little details in everything and most of the streets have these ceramic tiles in them telling you what the street was named when Louisiana was still under French possession. I also really liked the open air markets, especially the food part. Plus most restaurants had really nice outdoor seating, which made for a nice environment. Many had live music being played outside and we could also eat with the dog which was super helpful. The servers would bring us cups of water for him to drink because it was brutally hot.

Speaking of brutally hot, we definitely camped that night. When we got to the campsite we thought we might die in our sleep from the heat. Fortunately most of our campsite was in shade by the time we went to the grocery store to get dinner so the rest of the night went pretty well. There were also a ton of dragonflies all over the campsite. Remember when there was that Generation X of cicadas and it seemed like they were taking over the world? That's how these dragon flies were, there were clouds of them. Kaos kept trying to eat them. We (Zach, Kaos and I - my parents slept in a hotel) slept without the rain fly on the tent to let in the breeze and woke up fairly damp from the dew. I knew that would happen, but it destroyed my hair. After telling Zach how terrible my hair was, he looked at me and said "I feel how your hair looks: gross." Nice.

For breakfast we went to the famous Cafe du Monde for beignets which were probably the highlight of the trip for me. Easier to eat but still incredibly messy funnel cakes.. for breakfast?? I mean, come on.. It doesn't get any better. Plus our server made us laugh several times, only we were laughing at her and not with her. She was angry at us for taking up 2 tables (they were made for maybe 3 people each and we had 5, plus we were there for maybe 30 minutes) and then when she realized we wanted more water she took my mom's water glass out of her hand, dumped the rest of her water into my glass, and walked off to fill up the glasses for us. She was just trying to be fast and helpful, and told us how cute our dog was, so she won us over in the end.. but still. Wow.. Still, the beignets were too die for. I couldn't believe how delicious they were and the extreme mess we made was also entertaining. There was powdered sugar everywhere, including my ear as Zach constantly pointed out. It was awesome.

After that we left for Austin, which is where I am right now. We had planned on getting lunch in Baton Rouge and then dinner in Houston, but we were all stuffed from breakfast by the time we got to Baton Rouge so we waited until we got to Lafayette. That ended up being a great decision because our lunch there was just all around great; we ate at the Blue Dog Cafe. We found it on Yelp, always the best, and they opened up the patio so we could eat there with the dog. We had the patio to ourselves which we always prefer so we can be our obnoxious selves. Our waitress was super nice - she explained why she didn't have the terrible accent (it's really just in Northern Louisiana and outside of New Orleans), helped us with the menu (we needed a LOT of help - we're such obvious tourists), and brought out the other waitresses to pet Kaos because they all fell in love with him too .. seems to be a theme, huh?? ;) The food was also really good. The boys all got some sort of fried platter, and all of them were huge despite only being like $10. My mom got a salad that she liked so much that she bought a quart of their homemade dressing. I ate rolls because their honey garlic butter was so good there was no reason for me to get an entree. I broke down and ordered the battered fries too.. it was an awesome meal.

When we crossed into Texas it was immediately obvious why they say everything is bigger in Texas. First off, the exit signs start in the high 800's. Then we stopped at a gas station and saw the biggest grasshopper and wasp we've ever seen. These things could have eaten me alive. I also saw "country roads" for the first time ever. I didn't even know people could use that as their address until about a year ago, so actually seeing them in real life was like a natural phenomenon. It's also pretty impressive to see how many bayous and parishes there are (Louisiana and Texas both). Those are definitely two things you never see in Northern Virginia, or anywhere I've been, and they are extremely common down here. Bayous and swamps are awesome in my book, so that's just been another nice part of this trip.

The driving has been pretty easy so far for some reason. Because of the truck we've been going pretty slow, which actually makes it so you don't have to be scared when you see a cop on the side of the road. Who would have thought?? It's probably the first time in my life I haven't had to check my speed immediately and wonder if he was going to come get me, and its a pretty nice feeling. Also nice? The sunset tonight. It reminded me of leaving home Monday night, because we drove off into the sunset then too, and I realized that that already feels like forever ago.

And now we're just sitting in the hotel room waiting for Zach and my dad to get back with the Mexican food their grabbing. I actually got pretty sick today (fever and all) while driving up here, so I'm going big with an order of tortillas. I'm definitely looking forward to just hanging out in the room and getting a good nights sleep.