A Drive, a Night and Memories for Life.

Whew… what a trip it has been!

Last, we left you falling in love with Norfolk, the city of mermaids. After we’d left we drove 12 hours down into Florida. It was a long drive, but honestly, it was easy. We’ve come to find that the hardest trips have been the shorter ones. They seem to drag on forever and there’s usually quite a bit of traffic and rain involved. But driving to Florida was just like 600 miles on the same road. Yup. 600 miles.

When we arrived, we met up with Dawn’s family. Her dad and about half of her siblings were hanging out in a villa in Orlando for a week and it worked perfectly to meet up with them. Dawn’s siblings were more than willing to give up their room for us. Okay, maybe not super willing, but Dawn’s older sibling card trumped all excuses. We were hungry, so we went out with her family on a late night taco run.

Guys. Tacos have become life. We’ve had way too many. But all that cheesy goodness just calls to you, man.

That night, we crawled into out rightly acquired bed and we slept.

And slept. And slept some more. When we woke up, we posted a picture about wanting to go back to sleep. That was a comfy bed.

Originally we had made plans to go to the beach and go shopping. It was crazy hot out. The kids had already been out in the sun a lot and to be honest, neither of us really felt like being in the muggy sun all day. Call us boring, but it was really hot. Instead, we worked on updating stuff and we hung out with the kids through the day.

That night, Dawn’s dad asked if we wanted to just cook dinner since the villa we were in had a full kitchen. So, we went and bought the ingredients for seafood alfredo and made that. Sarah even helped cook by chopping up an onion and slicing bread! It was great seeing all the kids get together and do what they could do to help. We cooked, laughed and ate until we were full. It was a fun night, just spending with family. That was some gooooood bread.

The next day was Sunday. We got up early early before the sun rose and started our journey. The next stop was New Orleans, Louisiana. We were both really excited for NOLA. Having never been, we weren’t really sure what to expect. We didn’t know anything about the city or the people other than “Mardi Gras” stories. But, we were ready for an adventure after one day of relaxing. If there’s something the two of us don’t like, is being uneventful for too long.

We decided to go with Air BnB for our NOLA stay. We typed in the address and off we went! Excited for the night ahead of us, we didn’t stop too much. We really wanted to be adventurous and go to all the side stops, but seeing how much driving we were already doing, we decided against it for this part of the trip.

When we arrived in NOLA, we were immediately taken in by how creative it seemed. There were colors and graffiti paintings everywhere. It was like falling into a laughing gas induced dream. Colors, art, jazz music everywhere! We drove on down the road looking for the house we were staying in. Here’s the thing about New Orleans… everything looks.. well, kinda sketch. We didn’t know if we were in a good or a bad part of town. We were just a bit concerned since we’d never been there. What made matters worse is that there was construction blocking our street and it took some maneuvering to get around. Sarah’s two words for NOLA? Raunchy and dirty. Our kinda place. Finally, we got parked and situated and walked up the steps to our temporary home.

Immediately, we stopped in front of the door because neither of us knew how it opened. I know that sounds crazy, but we really weren’t sure of what to do. It looked like one of those pantry doors that fold into itself. The knob didn’t turn, and we really didn’t want to break the door so we kinda looked around for another entrance. Finally, being brave, Sarah pushed at the door…

Barking. Lots of yip yappy little barks. It was terrifying knowing that such a small animal could have so much to say. The door pushed in to reveal an actual door with a lock and handle. Okay, we can do that. We got inside and we were met Chloe, the little chihuahua, Charles, the great golden retriever, and Molly, the white, distant but loveable cat. Chloe followed us everywhere and then ran and hid every time we tried to approach her. Charles just loved on us. He was our protector for the night. Molly decided she liked us later into the night and moved in between our feets trying to cuddle. They were great animals, and it was nice not feeling alone in a new place.

When you first wander into the house, you are greeted with a long hallway. There are 3 doors on the left and one at the end. Our room was the first on the left, the Red Room. The bed had a plush velvet blanket, and pillows. There was a small loveseat and a desk. But the coolest thing was a fireplace in the bedroom. It was pretty bad ass looking. That bed may have been comfier than the Florida one. Either way, we weren’t in NOLA to sleep.. so we had to find a way to make friends.

Hey. There’s an app for that right? That helps you find other people near you and you can talk and meet up with them. What’s that called? Oh, yeah. Tinder! That’s right, folks. We made a tinder account. And we tried to match with as many people, boys and girls, that had the word “adventure” on their profile. Also, if they were foreign. Basically, we matched a lot of strangers with accents.

We bravely messaged a few people. The very first to respond was Cam. Thank you Cam for messaging us crazy girls back. We love you.

Cam asked what we were doing. We told him our dilemma of being in town for one night and not knowing anyone. We just wanted to see the sights and see what life in NOLA was all about. It just so happened to be his last night in town. He’d been there a good portion of the week. He invited us out with him and a few of his friends. We were so down.

So, who is Cam? Well, first of all, he’s Australian. Not only that but he quit his job(mostly) to travel the world in January. He’s planned to travel for 2 and a half years. This is the coolest person ever. Right? He studied.. something with engineering. (Hey, we were in NOLA. You do the math.) He was the best tour guide/ new found friend/ mediator/ inspiration for us. He answered all of our questions and talked with us about our lives. If he thought we were crazy, he didn’t seem to mind. He stuck with us til 3 AM.

The first place we went to was Frenchman. It’s lined up and down with bars and food and jazz music. Neon lights guide you from one end to the other. Yellow and baby blues are not out of place painted on the walls of the restaurants and buildings. We were looking to try crawfish while we were there, but apparently it wasn’t a good season for them But there was a hot dog place that sold craw dogs. So we figured, why not? Close enough! It wasn’t bad food.. the problem was the heat. It was so hot. It followed us into the restaurant where there was a few fans going, but no AC. Trying to eat such heavy food in such a muggy place didn’t sit well with either of us. We tried the craw dog, but sadly, we didn’t finish it.

When we were here, we also met Joel. Joel is British and was staying at the same hostel as Cam. He didn’t recognize a Beatles song! What the heck, Joel. We didn’t spend too much time with him because he wandered off into the night. Cam then took us to a jazz bar where one of the guys who helped with the hostel was playing in a jazz band. We danced and drank and danced some more. I don’t know how long we spent there but we had so much fun. Cam introduced us to some of his traveling friends who talked to us about the places they’d been. It’s really awesome meeting new people and hearing about their lives. We probably would have stayed all night, but there was still all of New Orleans to see!

After this, we went over to Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street is crazy. It’s basically a giant jazz rave filled with bars, music, and strip clubs for several blocks. Honestly, there was so much to just look at we didn’t even really go in any place. So many people laughing and dancing and having a good time. There were Mardi gras beads strewn across the streets and cars weren’t allowed to drive down Bourbon. We tried something called a hand grenade that was sweet and sour and good. By this time, we were used to the noise and the crazy. But we had a mission.

Before we left on our trip, we met up with a bunch of friends at Chumley’s. Dawn’s friend, Babbi, had told Dawn about a trip to a psychic earlier that week. Intrigued, we decided to put it on the unofficial bucket list. We asked Cam if there were any fortune tellers in the crowds and he said he’d seen a few, so we went up and down Bourbon street in search of our psychic. We found her, and she graciously allowed us to videotape Sarah’s palm reading and Dawn’s cards. It was an interesting experience. We may have spent the next day completely over analyzing everything that she told us. She was very kind and very sweet. If there was more time, we would have gone back to her and asked her more questions about her life.

After the psychic we wandered around the city. We went to Louie Armstrong Park which was closed, but we danced the night away together in front of the lights. We walked to Jackson Park, and eventually back home. During our walks, we asked Cam so many questions about traveling. What we picked up is that for him, his stay in a city is all about the people. If you’re with rude and uncaring people, the visit won’t be as nice as opposed to happy and sweet people. That seems to hold true for life in general, so it makes sense that this is the case for traveling as well. He told us that he tries to eat food that is famous from the region he is in. He told us that we were some of the first people to get together and talk about lives and really hold a conversation about traveling. That was pretty neat. (Dawn here: I am completely enamored with him and his traveling. I wish I could remember more of what he said).

We finally got home around 3 in the morning. We were met with the inebriated person who was taking care of the house. Brian was his name and he promised to make us french toast in the morning.

He lied.

Liar.

After struggling to get ourselves up and moving and then being faced with the disappointment of no french toast, we drove ourselves over to a diner that has been visited by Guy Fieri, the food network dude. We each had a poh boy and then began our drive to Texas.

New Orleans, we love you. We will come back to you again one day.