Entering New Orleans
New Orleans is one of those cities that have something for everyone. The first thing that blew us away was the entrance into the city, which was the world’s tenth longest bridge. You drive for what seems like forever on this engineering marvel, and at the same time on the side of the bridge are the little bayou houses the you imagine you would see in a swamp.
The first thing we did upon arriving in the city was go to Mardi Gras world, which is where 80% of all the floats for Mardi Gras are made. We just happened to have the worst possible timing. Mardi Gras World is on one side of train tracks and the parking lot is on the other, we just happened it get out of the car at the exact moment a ridiculously long train arrived. So we spent what felt like 20 minutes waiting for the dam train to pass. Well we finally made it into Mardi Gras world, and it was like we walked into a
The city is absolutely beautiful, reminiscent of many other European cities. With old style buildings and gas lights on every corner, you really felt like you took a step into another world. It was pretty much every child’s nightmare rolled into one massive factory. Look at the pictures because words will not do it justice.
French Quarter
France and Spain have left its mark on the French Quarter, and it is felt at every turn. From the old architecture to the gas lights at every turn, you feel like you are not in any normal city. If France and Spain left its mark on the French quarter, then Amsterdam left its mark on Bourbon street. Aside from the red lights district I have never seen so much sex for sale, it was an experience.
Now the best part of New Orleans over all might just be the fact that they allow for open containers of alcohol. Not only that but they have open bars all over the place on bourbon street. What that meant for us was buying 22oz hurricanes right away, (around 6pm). So with hurricanes in hand we strolled around bourbon and canal street in awe of this amazing place. By the time we reached our dinner destination, Coops’ place, none of us could legally drive and were well on our way to a great night.
Dinner could have gone better, not because the place was bad, but because Cooper and I got into the first ever twitter fight. We both tried to damage each other’s reputations as much and as fast as we could. The fight ended in me buying everyone another round of 22oz daiquiris, and almost pissing myself in the store as I waited to get the Daiquiris. With the peace offering all was restored, and the night truly begun.
Now at 22 years of age, after having traveled Europe, and attending one of the nation’s biggest and most fun colleges, I can easily say that so far that first night in New Orleans was the craziest night of my entire life. I will try to describe it the best I can, (which is only upsetting Cooper and Kasey), but I feel that no matter what I do I can never do that night justice.
So before we even started the second round of daiquiris Kasey and I were blowing .08, with cooper in the lead at .1, so as you could imagine things were starting off pretty crazy. To solidify the peace offering we killed our drinks in what could only be described as dangerously to fast. With our loss of driving ability we headed out on foot towards bourbon street, with a curious anticipation of where the night could go from here. Being just 8:30 we decided it was too early to go to the strip clubs, so we walked around and poked our head in to most of bourbon streets bars. Most of them had live music, which was cool, but it was nothing to special so we didn’t stay to long. We did stay long enough for cooper to work his moves on two girls, and I joined in trying to help out but because the music was so loud there was no way we could even talk, so we scared the girls away. With one strike out, and a little bit drunker we decided it was time.
The first place we went wasn’t exactly a strip club, but called live acts. So Kasey and I lost our strip club virginity to a sex show club. The girls looked like they were cracked out on something strong enough to get an elephant high plus they all were already trashy. Not long after sitting down at the table (after ordering vodka red bulls), a somewhat cute but very trashy stripper walks up a places herself on my lap despite my attempts to get her not to. She could probably see the fear in my eyes and figured she could use it to her advantage. So we had a slightly awkward but very interesting conversation where she divulged that I could get a dance for $40, get a private room for $60 and she implied that for more dough more could happen. I politely refused her, but she was persistent and would not get up. So she sat there until she had to get onto stage, at which she asked me to come up and give her a dollar on stage. Still terrified at this point I decided very much against it, and let Kasey throw a dollar to her on stage. This only pissed her off more and she threw the dollar back at Kasey, and then gave him the finger as she walked by. Priceless, he got a dollar from a stripper and she told him to go fuck off, doesn’t get much better then that.
So we had our fun in the sex show club and decided it was time to move on. We jumped back on to bourbon street, got some oversized beers and continued our adventure week. We decided to scale up on the classiness of the club and went to “barely legal”, which was definitely a one star improvement over the last club. The probably though is there was a 15$ cover, and we were not going to pay cover, but that was Cooper’s specialty. So after making friends with the bouncer and the attendant, he somehow managed to get us in without having to pay cover. Immedialty after walking in to this club we could feel the difference in quality as this one had large red plush seats and all the security personal were dressed in suits. Well not long after sitting down Cooper decided he had to get me the best stripper in the place. So he goes up and talks to one of the guys in a suit and he shortly comes back with a girl name Andi. She was my first lap dance, an experience I will always remember. She escorted me back to some private rooms in the back of the building, where she sat me down, and very nicely explained that my friends had already tipped, and that all I needed to do was just sit there. The next couple of minutes seemed to last forever, and the experience was amazing. I remember how sad I was to see the timer on the right slowly tick away, but all good things have to end I guess. So with that I headed back out to the boys and took a seat feeling like a new man.
We spent some more time there just hanging out and we got to watch Andi take the stage where she pulled off some incredible acrobatic maneuvers. I was mesmerized and could not believe the atheism of this girl. After her show she came off stage and sat with me and we talked for some good time. I was loving spending time with her, but Cooper thought (rightly so) that I should get out of there before I feel head over heels for this girl. So he challenged her to a fight, which as strange as it sounded worked really well she ended up getting up and chasing after her while Kasey forced me to grab my jacket and walk out. I gave her a hug goodbye and according to rumors from Kasey and cooper I may have told her I loved her (I don’t remember that). So for the next hour or so we went around and gave my therapy about why you don’t fall in love with strippers. We got advice from bums, bouncers, and even former strippers. All this did was make me think about her more and make the problem worse though. Luckily later in the night as we were heading home we saw Andi and she waved to me.
After failing therapy we felt that we had to go in to a strip club called Ricks, just to pay homage to our Ricks back home. Ricks was for the most part completely dead except for us and a couple of strippers. So we set up shop up front by the stage. In no time at all a absolutely beautiful girl came over and started talking to us. Well before long her and cooper dissapered into the back. I don’t know what happened next but these are the facts we do have: money DID NOT exchange hands, and this stripper was texting Cooper at 3 in the morning.
After a really quick night of sleep we were back on the town. On our way to Café Dumonde for beignets the weirdest guy in New Orleans yelled to us “you guys are still going? That’s incredible. I took a picture of you guys at like 5 in the morning.” Wow, I don’t remember everything.
Café Dumonde was delicious and right after we got on a tour of New Orleans and Katrina. It was nice to see how some places were fixed, but sad that there were still untouched places. We learned that it was the flood walls, not the levees that broke. After the tour we went to the casino for a little more gambling and then to Johnny’s Po Boys for lunch and it was another unbelievable New Orleans meal.
We went next to the Voodoo museum and met Papa John, who told us he had a 14 foot snake upstairs that could strangle us and an animal like a Komodo dragon that could run 30 miles per hour and catch us if we ran. Also neither of them are in cages and they don’t like the smell of smoke or alcohol. Cooper told him there was no smoke or alcohol on us to make it seem like we were good people who didn’t want to be killed by his animals but Kasey said it had only been a few hours.
We then went to Mr. Chubbys to pay for All Day All Night All You can Drink for $25 for beer and daiquiris. This is the best deal in all of New Orleans and probably saved us $100 each. As we were walking to our hotel we passed this stage where a guy was making a commotion and inviting everyone to the show. He spent a half hour building up the show and when we finally had enough people music went on and he asked for someone to donate a beer. Then he said he would make the beer disappear then he chugged it and said “that’s the show now lets party” it was really funny. He also gave us other wisdom like “the worst part about chugging a beer is you need another beer.” When people showed up late he said to them “oh, you missed the show? I chugged a beer.” He looked like Kenny Powers in a Reggie Bush jersey. This was a lot of fun because it was like being at a resort hotel but everyone had drank much more.
For dinner we went to the Hornets game where we got a package that let us meet the cheerleaders. We also continued our efforts to break all arena rules by actually getting onto the court after the game to take a picture. This went better in New Orleans than it did in Memphis.
The rest of the night highlights: Kasey carrying a piece of pizza and a beer down Bourbon and dropping both of them in one very athletic move, a bunch of kids from Dayton doing the O-H-I-O to “Hang on Sloopy” as Kasey tried to start fights with all of them, we were told by one pizza guy that he had the cheapest pizza around but if we could find cheaper he would give us a pie free. We got another pizza place to sell us pizza for 1 penny less than his and give us a receipt. The asshole wouldn’t give us a full pie though and made us go back to get an itemized receipt just to get 1 free slice each.
The next morning we went to the awesome New Orleans School of Cooking where you learn how to cook and eat a lot. This place was great and Chef Michael is the man. New Orleans is the greatest place ever but we had to keep moving. Next up: Birmingham.
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