June 15 Adventure: New Orleans, LA

Bourbon St. from our balcony

So as y’all know, my room mate Rachelle is from right outside New Orleans so the weekend after Jordan and mom were in town, we flew down to NOLA to spend the weekend on Bourbon St. and pick up her new car.  Getting to Louisiana was an adventure in and of itself.  We started our journey right after work, flew through security (even with Grand Rapids’ one metal detector….ya, it’s not a very “happening” airport..) and of course ran into a small delay due to “maintenance issues”. Apparently the bathroom lock wasn’t working properly…does anyone even use those things on a tiny, 2 row airplane?? Anyways, we got to our connecting flight in Dallas and it almost hurt to be SO CLOSE to home!! We did have a fun Dallas native flight attendant we loaded us up with fast facts on the DFW airport. For instance…

• DFW covers more than 30 sq. miles, it has its own zip code
• DFW has 3 radio towers
• Every major city in the United States can be accessed in 4 hours or less
• DFW has 7 runways, all of which have 10 ft of concrete underneath them
• There was a concrete shortage in the country during the time of DFW’s construction!

But that’s more or less where the fun ended and the head ache set in.  After 2 gate changes and several updates on the status of the “maintenance issue repair” our plane was dubbed inoperable and we were delayed indefinitely.  I kind of got comfortable on a mat and figured spending the night in the airport wouldn’t be so bad if it meant I could go to sleep that instant (I had been up since 6 am Eastern time, and it was now approximately midnight Eastern time).  

 Finally we were notified that we would be able to fly out that night and a plane was on its way! Our very disgruntled group boarded the plane then was told that we now had to wait for the co-pilot to retrieve the updated ticker information because it was now technically Saturday.  We had to have been waiting in the plane, at the gate for almost 45 minutes and around 1 am Central time (now this is 2 am Eastern time) we were on our way to Louisiana.  The instant we got to New Orleans, Rachelle’s parents swept us away to a local diner for Café Ole and beignets, of course!  The place was covered in a soft layer of powdered sugar and soon enough, so was I.  My head finally hit the pillow around 5 am EST…yes, I was up for nearly 24 hours!

 Saturday morning we started off the day slow and grabbed a “snow ball”, aka snow cone with finely ground ice, on our way into New Orleans.  The city itself was interesting, pretty rough but you could tell it knew how to have a good time.  We arrived at the Marriot on Canal Street where we would spend that night, and it really did look, as a man in the airport described it, “Las Vegas, condensed, and shook around in a trash can” but I of course mean that in the most admiral way possible.  After we dropped off our stuff in Erin’s (Rachelle’s friend, the 21^st birthday girl, the other reason for our trip down here) hotel room, we started wandering down Bourbon St. to find another friend’s balcony that served as home base for the night. 

inaugural snow ball. ironically, I didn't have one in my hand yet...

Bourbon St. was packed with bars, dancing, dancing ladies (if you know what I mean), live music, hole in the wall eateries, souvenir shops, beads beads beads, art, promoters! What an interesting, over stimulating place.  I had the pleasure of meeting the birthday girl and a random smattering of her friends and family members that night.  We danced and ate and heckled passersby and threw out beads and blew out birthday candles and danced some more. It was such a good time, and I cannot wait to visit again! 

I'm READY!!!

"Sorority squats" and the always flattering "Duck lips"

Sunday morning we laid low and celebrated father’s day with her family and a wonderful home cooked meal.  Monday morning we hit the road and started our drive back to Michigan, it was long and tough at some points, but seven states and 17 hours later, we were home sweet home. We spent our second vacation day Tuesday relaxing and recouping in preparation for the short, and exponentially less thrilling, work week.