Day Sixteen: New Orleans

Wednesday we started the day by trying to find Magazine Street, a street our bartender friend told us to go. We jumped on a street car and needed exact change to ride (1.25) I only had dollar coins or a $20 and so I asked the driver if he took dollar coins. The guy was a total jerk, was on his phone and pretty much mumbled some response and then yelled "you're paid, get on!"

seriously, geeze. do your job and stop being so crabby please.


                                                   the street car. crabby man in blue.

When we looked at the sign with the list of stops, we noticed that "magazine street" was not on there.
The only street that sounded similar was "Malpanene" street. So we're like, well... maybe we heard the bartender wrong.

So we got off on Malpanene, and looked around and immediately knew we had made the wrong decision.
Again, we found ourselves in the ghetto. 
It was so freaking hot and sticky out too... ugh, kinda miserable!
But we ran into a girl putting out outside dining chairs and asked her if there was a magazine street and where it was. She pointed us in the right direction but then told us to take the main streets there because it wasn't very safe to take the others. (It was 11am)

So we headed off to the main intersection a few blocks up... on our way we saw a man passed out on the side of the street with his hands down the back of his pants.

Anyways, we finally made it to Magazine street.
We went into a smoke shop to ask directions because we still didn't really see very many shops.
The guy working was really cool and told us a little about the city.
He told us "I like to think that our city motto is "sunny and hot with a chance of parades"

We found the shops (most everything was super expensive so it was mostly window shopping) and then we were looking for somewhere to have some lunch.
We were being as random as we were the night before with trying to find a place for dinner and we got just as lucky!
We went to this little diner.. as we walked in, I noticed a bunch of stickers on the front door. One of the stickers that stuck out to me was grey and pink and said "Pablove foundation"
My heart immediately jumped.

I know about the Pablove foundation.

A few years ago I stumbled onto a blog written by a dad in California whose little son, Pablo was fighting cancer. I followed the blog for a few months, and then Pablo passed away. I remember crying when I found out he lost his battle... I felt so connected to this family who lived half a country away, who i had never met.

Anyways, I've kept Pablo and his family in my thoughts for almost two years now.
And now all of a sudden I see a sticker in New Orleans about this foundation.

So we went and sat down and at the booth next to us, i saw the sticker again. The walls in this diner are covered in polaroid pictures of guests who have eaten at this diner. So I looked under the sticker, and sure enough, below the sticker was a polaroid of the Castelaz family... including Pablo, with a headful of curly brown hair.

This family sat at the booth right next to where Francesca and I were sitting. Of all the places in the world.
It gave me shivers, and really made me realize how small the world can really be sometimes.



As for lunch?
I had the "Katrina Combo" ... super awkward to order. Don't even know why they would name it that in their menu!



We did a little more shopping/walking after lunch and saw this cool sign in someones front yard

hahah

then we caught another street car to go back to the hotel/french quarter

and we heard thunder like i've never heard before.

The rain clouds in New Orleans are a lot lighter than they are in Wisconsin but that doesn't meant the approaching storm is any less intense.

Within minutes, it was pouring buckets of rain.

Buckets.

But our stop finally came up and so we got off the street car and headed to our hotel.
With no umbrella, mind you.

And when we got to the hotel, we looked like this.

it really looked as though we had taken a shower with our clothes on.

we changed into drier clothes and then decided we might as well take advantage of the crappy weather and do some laundry.

We went down to the main lobby to get some change for the machines. Francesca did her laundry first and the concierge (an old man) gave her a free wash and then offered to let her use the employee dryer in the back.

We then took naps but heard a knocking at the door..
it was the concierge bringing up Francesca's clean laundry.
(which was full of bras/underwear)

Creepy?

bahah. kinda.

But it finally stopped raining and we got ready and went out. I got a hurricane which was very delicious.
We headed back to the Touche Bar to hang out with our friendly bartender. We hung out with him until they closed at midnight and then he went out for a drink with us down the street. His friend Brittany came along too and the four of us had a lot of good conversation.

On our way home, Francesca and I stopped at an IHOP because it's on my 101 in 1001 list. To go to breakfast place in the middle of the night. We ordered a water to go with our meal that we were going to split... our waitress told us they only have bottled water and that it costs 99 cents. We told her we'd just have nothing to drink then and she got SUPER upset.

she walked away and was like "nothing to drink?! are y'all crazy?" in this irritated tone

And we're both like... well that's kind of rude.

But then 5 minutes later she came back with two bottled waters and told us they were on her.

So nice!

So we gave her a very, very good tip :)