Tuesday, June 22, 2010

and continued...

Day 6 - June 20 2010
Odometer reads: 2145 miles

Got up and out of the motel by 11:30, and headed straight into New Orleans!! Arrived at The India House, a hostel for students and travellers. Weren't sure how safe it would be for us or the car, but we figured we'd give it a chance. New Orleans is still very dilapidated from the floods and it's surprising how quickly the neighborhoods change from lovely to shady; even the Ritz-Carlton and the Astor Hotel downtown look like broken down concrete office buildings from the outside.

The India House is a big, OLD yellow house on South Lopez Street with two stories and an attic, used as a bedroom. We're staying in an 8-bed female dorm; the whole house is covered in cool hand-painted murals and posters from everywhere/everything. Every wall is a different color and the other people staying here come from all over, but so far a lot of them are Brits. There's a pool out back with a stage/deck and a bar with a grill, where you can usually find at least 4 people drinking at any hour of the day. Two big lounge rooms with couches and two bathrooms, and a communal kitchen with just a few tiny bugs, due to the ever-open doors and windows. The first person we met was Jean from England, on her last shift before leaving for Costa Rica, who checked us in and gave us our bedding and keys.

After settling in a little bit we headed downtown to see Decatur Street, Bourbon Street and the rest of NO's French Quarter. We've never seen so many bars, strip clubs, and cute restaurants in one place. Not to mention the number of drunk people at 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday. We stopped in a couple bars, including the Big Easy for slurpee-style Hurricanes and Daiquiris, and Krazy Korner to see a local Jazz band. We also stumbled upon what turned out to be Kat's favorite stop of the day, Kupcake Factory, for an extremely fluffy and sweet Birthday Cake cupcake!

We walked around for a few hours and finally headed back to the hostel to hang out and cook a much-needed healthy dinner of (tons of) broccoli and rice. Showers, bed on our top bunks. Z's immediately.

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