1-10 American Road Trip: New Orleans

The next morning, after Ashley had revealed she suspected someone had been lurking in our room while we were sleeping...we hastily packed our bags and left the creepy hotel behind. We walked down sunny, New Orleanians streets to find suitable breakfast in the French Quarter.

The city was a combination of dirty, sophisticated, French and American, with undertones of violence and debauchery, mysticism and hospitality. It was intoxicating. As we were walking in the early morning the streets were being washed and the buildings along Bourbon street were being scrubbed clean, washing the sins from the past night away.

Ashley and I found a cajun breakfast place called Oceana Grill, that was recommended by a "top 10" list online, but we noticed that the further down Bourbon street we walked--the sketchier it became. What drew us into eating at the restaurant over the other choices was the user's comment that recommended "Maw Maw's Cajun Breakfast"...however, once I had surveyed the menu I decided on a lobster omelette.

I managed to eat about half of it... Ashley did not do much better with her entire baguette of French toast.

Some of the buildings already had Madi Gras decorations up.

We wandered around town, letting our hangovers subside until we stumbled upon the oldest cemetery in New Orleans: St. Louis Cemetery, which was built in 1789. Now days you cannot get inside the cemetery without a paid guide as there have been vandalisms and thefts. The cemetery boasts the raised, monumental graves of voodoo queens, rich patrons of the city's past and even the, as of yet, empty grave of Nicholas Cage (which is shaped like a giant pyramid and is ugly as hell). Apparently Nicholas did not do well at befriending the locals when he came to town, as he was drunk, disorderly, rude, bought the oldest, most haunted house in town and then could not pay its taxes and built an ugly eyesore of a grave for himself, the locals say he has bad juju now.

The above is not Mr. Cage's grave but a vault that the Catholic church uses to store homeless people who have died in their homeless shelter.

In New Orleans all the graves have to be kept above ground as the table water will fill a grave that is buried at six feet deep, and the coffin will shoot out of the ground like a champagne cork. Of course, in the past some cemeteries practiced puncturing the coffins full of holes to make the coffins stay down, however if a heavy rain came those coffins would be floating down the city center. And so the graves started to be built above ground, in the European style (which obviously was all the rage in very fashionable and French New Orleans in the 1700s).

Around noon our hangovers had relented enough that we were able to get on the road again and head through the swamps of Louisiana towards Texas.