New Orleans Adventure

Tour de Fat

Before flying to New Orleans, I went to Tour de Fat with some friends, Emily and Ryan. This fun affair encourages bicycle riders to ride their bikes there (Tour de). Then they can enjoy music, food booths and Fat Tire beer (Fat). The attached picture is of a performer on stilts from the March 4^th band, the same band that played at Evergreen’s graduation.

I parked my car at Emily’s house and took a bus at 1:30 in the morning to the airport then waited for my 4 a.m. flight.

New Orleans:

The account of my trip is divided into sections – so you can scroll down and read any section you prefer, or all of them J. This account is from a combination of memory, notes on scraps of paper and photos.

Over view

New Orleans was a mixed bag. This won’t be a starry-eyed tale. Perhaps I’m getting older or something. Or maybe I wanted to explore outside the tourist areas to see more of the city. Sure, I purchased the perfunctory t-shirt, sticker, refrigerator magnet, postcards and shot glass. The French District was beautiful and where I could explores shops, restaurants and sit by the Mississippi for some quiet and a bit of a breeze.

India House

I stayed at a hostel called India house, a bohemian place with a mural of Buddha on the wall of the women’s room, where I stayed with 6 other women on bunk beds. Music usually played in the living room, sometimes too loud. The house cat, which looked skinny, walked around. The best thing though was the swimming pool – after walking around New Orleans in hot humid weather, a dip in the pool was heaven. The pool was also a good place to talk to other people staying there. One man from England was pretty funny but ended up getting blisters on this shoulder pretty bad and looked like a lobster.

Unfortunately, there was no air conditioning in the kitchen or dining room. Basically the air conditioned rooms were the living room and television room. A fan blew in the dorm, but mostly everyone either slept in their underwear or very light clothing. The bathroom floors were wet from the showers, with hair.

I liked the murals though and have attached pictures here so you can see them. Some show the tradition of Jazz and other music genres, which originated in New Orleans (N.O.)

I go into detail about this hostel because if you go to New Orleans I would recommend finding another hostel to stay at. If your ok with staying in a large college-like house with a refrigerator devoted only to beer, can tolerate noise and not-so-tidy bathrooms, then you might like India House. Also, you need to be heat/humidity tolerant, or else you might find yourself never eating in the dining room or using the kitchen, unless it is in winter.

Getting into downtown from India House was easy (the hostel was about 4 miles from downtown and the waterfront). A trolley system was right outside and took people to downtown and to other areas, such as the garden district with its mansions, and the warehouse/art district.