Houston TX to New Orleans and French Quarter

Saturday - Sunday: November 10-11, 2012 

The jet stream is really low for this time of year.  It’s pushing a big low front across the entire country right now. The low is producing temperatures in the 30s and 40s in the south west where we were lounging in 80 -90 degrees just a couple of weeks ago.  We seem to be running just ahead of it so far.  It  looks like it will overtake us in New Orleans on Monday though.

The drive from Houston to New Orleans was a long one of 315 miles.  We are now definitely in the swamp region of the country.  The drive was even longer due to the traffic jam in Baton Rouge for the LSU football game on Saturday afternoon.  Highway 10 comes within 3-4 miles of the stadium there.  The other thing is that the highway in Louisiana so far sucks!  It is very, very bumpy making it hard to keep up my speed even when I only do 60 MPH. We left Houston at 9:20 am and arrived at our site in New Orleans at 4:30 pm.  It was a long day.

Swamps in Louisiana.

Crossing back over the Mississippi.

New Orleans.

Our gated RV Park.

 We decided that on Sunday we would take a walking tour of New Orleans and have dinner in the French Quarter.  Neither of us has been to New Orleans before so we like doing a tour so we get a basic understanding of the city.  Patty found that there are several “free” tours that rely on donations so we picked one that starts at 2 pm.  We were ready to go at 11 am and we were going to take a taxi in to town so we could drink and also not need to try to park the BAT (Big Ass Truck). 

We are about 5 miles from the French Quarter at our RV Park which is in a not so good area of New Orleans, by the way.  The park office gave us a list of 3 taxi companies who service the area.  Oh, and by the way, this afternoon the Saints are playing their rivals Atlanta in New Orleans.  Due to the game we couldn't get a taxi to pick us up. 

We had been waiting in front of the park for about half an hour when a black Honda pulled out of the exit of the hotel next to us and hit a black Impala that was just passing by.  We were just 20 feet from the whole accident!  The Black Impala was being driven by a very racist black woman who jumped out of the car and started screaming at the white driver of the Honda.  She was saying that the white guy was just waiting for a black face to come by so he could hit her. Sheeish!

The Hondas driver also had his girlfriend as a passenger in the car who came over to talk with us as the yelling was occurring in the street.   All of the yelling was coming from the black woman.  The girlfriend introduced herself as Elecia and said she and her boyfriend were from Baton Rouge.  They both were young in their 30s.  We kept trying to get a taxi and Elecia kept begging us to stay and talk to the cops as witnesses.  I never really understood why we were needed as it appeared to us that her boyfriend just didn't see the Impala and pulled into her by accident.  The damage to the vehicles basically proved just that also.  Due to the Football game, the cops took 2 hours to get there!  By this time we had missed the tour we were going to take.  Elecia insisted that they take us to the French Quarter after the police were done with the accident.

By 2:30 in the afternoon the cops were done and the car had a hanging bumper rendering it not drivable.  We told them to take the car slowly over to our RV where I had tools and maybe we could get the car drivable again.  Elecia's boyfriend(Moody) tried to tie up the bumper to no avail.  So the bumper came off completely along with other parts.  We told them to just leave the parts next to the RV and come back for them after they drop us off. 

So we took off with Elecia driving the Honda.  Oh my GOD!!  She was the worst driver I have ever seen.  The boyfriend didn't seem to be upset at all about her driving either!  Patty and I thought we were going to be killed in the car.  After stopping again to pull off more parts of the car, we made it to the French quarter in one piece.  What a day so far!!

We first walked down to the Mississippi River and walked the river side park there.  We went to the Natchez Riverboat pier and made dinner reservations for Monday night on the riverboat.  We walked both the length and width of the French Quarter on several streets for about 2 hours while having drinks along the way.  Some local tourists gave us some advice about a good restaurant, the Oceanic,  so we went to there to have dinner.   The French Quarter is stuffed with restaurants, bars, and clubs so just about any would have been fine.

View from the river side park, the bridge we came over on Saturday over the Mississippi.

A wedding procession in the French Quarter.

The bride and groom.  The "train" has drinks in it.

Mississippi River park.

Also in the river park.

Buggies waiting to take passengers through the French Quarter.

Keith Richards was there too!

Another friend we met in the Quarter.

Bourbon Street just before dark.  

A musician with a large instrument.

Another wedding.  I think we saw 4 weddings in 3 hours.

Street performers.

The restaurant was good, not great, but good.  The place has seating on 3 floors as well as some outside dining in an interior patio area.  We had alligator as an appetizer that we didn't care for.  It didn't taste like chicken by the way.  For the main course Patty had the duck and I had cornmeal fried catfish.  I love catfish.  It’s a comfort food for me from Indiana.  Patty's duck was not a taste either of us liked.  It may be good to some, but not to us.

We were done eating around 9 pm and we got a taxi back to the RV Park.  It was a long and exciting day to say the least.

Tomorrow we plan to go shopping for some household stuff in the morning and then try to take the city tour that we missed at 2 pm.  This time we are going to try to take the city bus into town for just $1.50.  It’s also predicted to rain tomorrow but clear up by noon.  We shall see K

Stay tuned!