A Pig in NOLA (pt.1)

Read this with a southern accent if you can. It's better that way.

Tourisme 

I'm finally just coming off of my post-vacation high, and accepting that it's over. That real-world-blues that follows shortly after pretending like you aren't a tourist while blatantly doing touristy things is heavy on the heart and almost makes you wonder why you went.

Almost.

I went to #NOLA ya'll! For those of you not in the know, that's Nahlens to you. And boy was it a trip. 

Let me start by saying I never vacation. Like truly vacation. I bought multiple Dr. Scholl's products while on this trip so let that paint the picture for you of how into this I got. I travel quite a bit, but it's almost always based on work which means I always have an agenda--some other motivation that makes me go somewhere for the benefit of getting something done. Last time I checked, vacations are for exactly the opposite. 

And so it was.

After an extremely impulsive afternoon, I found myself with tickets to the Big Easy. And because I never actually take vacations, I didn't actually believe it would happen. With any other sort of good news, I sing it like I'm a Disney villain with a great melody. But this time I was so nervous something would go wrong, that I just sat back and ignored it until the day before I had to start plane hopping. At this point I was more concerned with my 3oz containers that I didn't take the time to research or make any plans.

This is so incredibly unlike me, but so is vacationing so I just rolled with it. Kathy, my partner in crime, and I had only two things in mind: getting to where it was warm hot and stuffing our little brown faces with seafood like the gluttons we aimed to be.

We luckily have similar interests in history, architecture and food so once we hit the city we were thoroughly giddy to just be in a new place, no schedule required. When does that ever happen? When do you ever get to just completely be somewhere and know you are fully present? My mind was genuinely blown away and I will say that overstimulated is an understatement.


New Orleans in itself is fabulous. It's a city that doesn't pretend or give any pretenses about who she is (I think it's a she?). She's flamboyant and romantic and everyone we met was more than happy to tell you how much fun you'd have in this Southeast Sin City.

Bourbon Street is everything you expect it to be at night: full of temptation with beer and daiquiris spilling into the cobblestone streets. In a city filled with this much neon, you feel like you're in a Girls Gone Wild audition on the Vegas strip. It's a bit racy for my Saturn Return-blood but it's hilarious if you accept it for what it is. Or if you imagine a petticoat version of it (I had Louisiana Purchase on the mind a lot).

Of course, in a place hundreds of miles away from your friends and family, you would expect that you run into someone you know and Kathy and I did just that. I think that's the kind of magic Bourbon Street harbors; it's quirky enough where you are not really that shocked and aside from my maxi dress doubling as a bar rag on the post-downpour streets, I'd say I would have enjoyed people watching into the wee hours of the morning. (Note: The bars don't close in New Orleans with the exception of one hour every year. One. Hour.)

We actually stumbled onto Bourbon by accident. We arrived early and needed to kill time before check-in and found ourselves wandering 75% of the French Quarter before dinner time. My fitness tracker told me we walked roughly a half marathon. On the first day. Genius, right?

Giving my feet a break and trying to look discreet about it.

Wrong. Insert the inserts. In a desperate attempt to save my feet, I tried multiple Dr. Scholl's inserts and only met demi-success with one set. I only tell you this because it was a significant part of my morning so if you go to NOLA, wear comfortable sandals (Not closed shoes because: Your feet + humidity for 12 hours = just throw those shoes away.)

Preservation Hall. I love Louis Armstrong so it's an honor to be in a city that adores him and keeps his spirit alive through his brassy tool. Everywhere you went there was music trickling in from not too far or next to you if you're lucky. See my favorite tuba here. So when presented with going to a jazz concert I imagined some variation on our Middle School Jazz Pops concert right before the whole band came on stage-- some organized situation with chairs and tiered seating but I couldn't have been more wrong. Preservation hall is the size of my college dorm room with the closets removed. It's dark and all exposed wood with a few benches meant for you to snipe for relief on your toes should you have been lucky enough to wait the hour in line to get up front. As soon as the music began, however, I was sent back into time.

Louie, Ella and the whole gang were going to show up in a bit to play me some jazz in our parlour room. Suddenly I was wary of police coming in to bust us for violating noise restrictions but we were going to bring down the house in the meantime. 

The beauty of the south is nobody is in a rush and it worked so well because neither were we. The majority of our time was spent "lollygagging" as my grandma would call it. Along the way we stopped for some museum tours and accidentally stumbled on a National Mint museum. My favorite, of course, was the Pharmaceutical Museum. We walked past it and it caught my eye when it was closed, which only heightened my giddiness when it was open for $5 tours the next day. The curator was phenomenal and presented a plethora of information on 19th century medicine that makes you question current medicine considering the outrageous treatments society used to think helped them but in fact killed them (think Belladonna and gold cased pills).

The tourism part--if you embrace it-- is very entertaining in a place like New Orleans. People love to tell you about the city, it's history, it's nooks and crannies and I loved hearing about it. It led to some amazing historical sites and of course fabulous places to eat. In fact, they're especially adamant about the food. It was glorious. Oh, what did we eat? Well funny story...