Checking Out the Big Easy

The hubby and I went to New Orleans over Martin Luther King weekend. I'm really glad to have gotten the chance to see it with my own eyes. The first quick impression was that things didn't seem as bad as you would have expected. Our flight arrived at 6:00 pm, so we got to see all the street lights illuminating the area, and it didn't look like there was anything astray from the air. When you got into the airport, nothing much looked odd there either, but you would expect anything that tourists would see to be all gussied up. The drive into town was interesting - again, everything obvious looked OK, it was when you had a gap in the concrete highway barrier wall that you saw empty damaged houses. The Superdome looked fine, but the Hyatt on the other side of it had many of the brown tinted windows replaced with white panels - odd. Once we got to the French Quarter, everything looked quite normal. The only odd thing was that it seemed less crowded than it should have been. So, once we checked in, we walked over to Bourbon Street and had our first (and only) Hand Grenade. Yuck. So we wandered and drank, and sat and drank, and chatted and drank, and... well, you get the picture. So began our long weekend adventure. I'll be posting more about our great NOLA adventure.