New Orleans, Louisiana

After a tough and pretty dismal day of traveling - we waited for almost three hours at immigration in Fort Lauderdale and had the bad (and expensive) misfortune of missing our flight the next morning - we were slightly bemused at the thought that this was suppose to be the easy, travel friendly part of our trip! Blinde sambok!

Regardless, we still managed to get to New Orleans in time and headed straight to our hostel, the NOLA Jazz House, which was situated just north of the famous French Quarter. The hostel staff are really friendly and helpful, actually just in general we found people around New Orleans to be extremely friendly and helpful...

On our first night in the Big Easy we decided to go to a traditional New Orleans creole restaurant that was within walking distance from our hostel, a place called Neyows. Not even ten minutes after getting our seats and going through the menu, an elderly African-American couple at the table next to us struck up a conversation about what's best to eat. They highly recommend the famous grilled oysters...Then barely ten minutes after that the waiter came and handed us a plate of grilled oysters and said it's from the couple next to us! When we looked over they were smiling ear to ear, saying "oh y'all gotta try them grilled oysters"! The oysters were delicious but we were mostly just blown away by the good old southern hospitality! It was a really cool way to start our New Orleans adventure!

A streetcar not named desire...

New Orleans has a very nifty and convenient tram system which they call streetcars, and our hostel was situated very close to the one of the lines that runs both down to the French Quarter and up to other parts of New Orleans. So after our very American breakfast of waffles with peanut butter and Nutella we jumped on the streetcar and headed down to the historic centre of the city, for yet another free walking tour - we can't get enough of them!

America...land of choice and loads of sugar!

Before our tour started we were greeted by another amazing site, which actually served as a great intro to the historic tour that was about to start, we saw for the first time the breathtaking view of the mighty Mississippi River!

The mighty Mississippi

Now we've become very much familiar with the free walking tour rigmarole after South America, but as one would expect, the Americans just know how to take something to the next level. Our guide firstly knew the colorful history of the city like the back of his hand but then delivered the stories with such zeal and theatrics that us two South Africans were literally hanging on to his lips!

Jackson Square

The city was founded by the French, way back before the American Revolution, but since New Orleans is literally surrounded by a massive swamp, they had trouble convincing people to come much less settle down...So they then did what any country does when they want to colonize a hostile place at the other end of the world...they sent the prisoners! Which didn't really make things better, so after a few years of disease and general unlawfulness France decided to cut its losses and sell it to the only other colonial player in the area, Spain. They actually gave them Louisiana for free! So the Spanish came and did a much better job than the French, they brought with them the experience of colonizing similar climatic regions in Latin America and thus knew how to yield better results, by planting sugarcane, and how to better utilize the powerful asset of the Mississippi River! Thus when you walk through the "French Quarter" the beautiful buildings you see are actually of Spanish colonial descent and not French. The French did get involved once again at a later stage when Napoleon demanded the state Louisiana back from the Spanish, and as he was then already in his ascent to European power he managed to get it back for free. He then kept Louisiana for an entire three weeks before he went on sell it to the Americans for $15 million in what became one of the biggest land deals in history - back then the Louisiana state stretched all the way up to what's now Montana!

The city had a lot of very colorful characters in those days, which is probably what you'd expect from a place situation in a swamp! You had the French ex-convicts, the cajuns, the Spanish, African slaves and free persons of colour which was the term for French mixed race children, and then off course the Pirates!

There was one famous pirate captain in particular, John Lefiet, who now has half the city named after him (again...a pirate!). The reason for this is that back during the American Revolution when the British attacked New Orleans, Lefiet, who, along with his crew, was in jail at the time for trying to kill the Governor, but got released to help in the fight, which he did, and pretty much saved the day! He provided most of the gunpowder that eventually defeated the Brits in a victory that many say turned the war in favor of the Patriots! Crazy!

Street Jazz artist

Anyway it was a really fun tour around a city which is also the birthplace of Jazz music, started by the slaves, which you can hear playing on most of the squares, and clubs around town - day and night! We would literally just go park off at a street bench and listen to a street jazz band play the iconic melodies of the South! 

Afterwards we enjoyed another New Orleans specialty at the famous Le Mond café, some very good coffee and beignets which are basically vetkoeke with a thick layer of casting sugar dusted over them - they're really delicious, my sister told me Kim Kardashian flies to New Orleans specifically just for them and we can understand why!

That evening we went to have another popular New Orleans meal (the place is renowned for its food) called a Po' Boy which is just a massive baguette sandwich - basically the result of the Americans taking a traditional French loaf of bread and super-sizing it! It was delicious though! After that we hit Frenchman street to go listen to some more Jazz and walked through some of the late night local art markets...

The next day we got to experience another iconic part of the South which is its vegetation, especially its massive Spanish Moss covered oak trees and the very lush swamp-like terrain around the waterways...We decided to go for an afternoon picknick in New Orleans' city park and just relaxed under the comforting shade of the giant oaks, the Spanish moss looking like big draping chandeliers as shreds of sunlight pierced through the thick canopies...

City Park

It was a great way to balance out the busy and vibrant atmosphere in the city!

On our last day we just strolled around the French Quarter one last time, took in the beauty of Jackson square with the backdrop of the mighty Mississippi and took every last streetcar we could find to see the other parts of town...It's really a great city to experience with a very unique history and culture, and a great place to start if you're doing a tour of the Southern states!

We had a midnight bus that night to Tallahassee, Florida, where we would take another connecting bus to another jewel of the South, Savannah, Georgia...

We had to walk a couple of blocks with our backpacks from the streetcar stop to the bus station and about halfway we passed a group of people chilling on the street corner at 23:00 at night. In these situations my South African instincts would kick in immediately, and we kind of veered away from them to the other side of the road...but in a very apt closing act to our wonderful stay in New Orleans, one of the guys shouted, "Hey y'all, you guys going to the Greyhound station? Well you're going the right way! You have a good night!"

You gotta love that Southern Hospitality!

Merci beaucoup New Orleans!