Home From NOLA

Greetings! We, me and Scott, are home form New Orleans! We had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back. We did the French Quarter, took the ferry across the river to Algiers, ate tons of wonderful food, road on the cable cars and saw the Garden District.

We met up with my friend Nathan, who was down their for a conference, and we all stayed in our timeshare. The timeshare just reopened a year ago the 5th. They did not have Katerina damage but had aftermath damage. All the computers and TV's were stolen and the basement flooded when the sump pumps didn't work. The street cars picked up and dropped off right at our hotel, we used them 3 of the days we were their. We shouldn't have rented a car.

Sunday night was the first "parade" of Carnival, which started last Sunday. One of the krews does their parade on a cable car. We waited 2 hours for it to go by, not really worth the wait. I also go to meet Blaine Kern, Mr. Marti Gras, his company makes 80% of the floats use in the parades for Marti Gras.

For those of you that don't follow college football the BCS Championship game was Monday night in the Superdome, LSU was playing Ohio State. It was crazy. You could barely move on Bourbon Street because of all the football freaks in town. New Orleans also had special "game pricing," the parking went from $14 all day on Thursday to $40 all day on Friday, and a daiquiri was $12 on Thursday and $20 on Friday.

We did not see to much Katrina damage. You could pay $90 and go on a tour of the damage. There were empty lots where they have torn down buildings. They have cleaned up the damage but haven't finished rebuilding. The street cars have only been back running a few weeks and not all of the power has been restored. We did see people living under the freeway. We asked locals about it and were told that most of those people were homeless before and are trying to milk the system now.

We got to eat at John Besh's Steak House, Emeril's NOLA, Cafe du Monde and Jonny's Po-Boy's. I already miss Crawfish Po-Boy's, a mid day Daiquiri, and of course my Diet Coke and Beignets. If you hven't made it to New Orleans you should. Gina add it to your bucket list!