The Big Sleazy

It was the 5^th of July, and no doubt there was quite a lot of America that would be waking up with a stinking hangover. But not the Gray brothers, heck no! Well, a little fuzzy maybe, but that was not gonna stop us seeing some sights in the Big Sleazy (Big Easy.....New Orleans). So the plan for this particular day was two-fold – firstly, to see the New Orleans cemetery, and secondly to scour the internet for bus times, accommodation and 1001 other things we needed to get done. First up, crossing the boundary across Canal Street to find the nearest trolley (tram) stop. This would take us into the Garden District, home of the famous cemetery.

For those of you who do not know about (and I was one of them before this little jaunt) the cemetery, I’ll give a brief explanation. New Orleans was built on swampland and when the residents went to bury their dead the bodies would rise up out of the ground due to the unstable ground conditions. Obviously nobody wants this, so the New Orleans folk borrowed a solution from the Spanish and created concrete tombs above ground. It is certainly a bizarre sight to see, and I think the only thing similar I have seen was in a James Bond movie with all the voodoo and Baron Samedi. Hundreds of concrete tombs set in rough lines in various states of disrepair, in part due to the living relatives just not having the means to restore or care for the plots. In some of the tombs there are up to nine people, possibly 50 or more years apart, and the mind boggles on the logistics of this kind of practice. I certainly won’t be applying for a job as a funeral director here!

The cemetery

After a couple of hours browsing the cemetery and the local area (although not too local due to the nature of the surrounding area) we headed back from our safe zone into our home safe zone of the French Quarter. This was merely another trolley ride back across the boundary line, with obligatory weirdo getting on and trying to converse with me and James, but what else would you expect. After lunch (another round of home-made sandwiches, with a meagre amount of lettuce included, but James already knows my feelings on this matter) we hit the ‘Bucks that was beginning to feel like our home away from home. We found a table and booted up the Mighty One (our little netbook – the reference is to the film The Motorcycle Diaries that James insisted I watch before coming on the trip). We proceeded to send out a multitude of requests for a couch or spare room in either Fort Worth or Dallas, we didn’t really mind which but I think we kinda thought that Fort Worth might be slightly more our scene. I mean interesting, of course. We are not interested in any “scene” as it were. And that was our afternoon. But it was necessary, and hopefully our next hotel will have full and proper wi-fi in our room.

Evening. Dinner. We had decided not to score a hat-trick of Man vs Food places as it was expensive and across the boundary. Plus, we had seen many places selling alligator meat and we were curious to try it. So after a brief wander around the streets trying to find an economical place to eat, we ended up back at the first place we had seen, which was offering Alligator sausage and French fries for $9. We grabbed a table and waited patiently for the waitress to appear. When asked if we wanted something to drink I enquired as to the quality (and alcohol content) of the strawberry daiquiris that were on the menu for $1 each. She scrunched her face up and said that they weren’t amazing, so we studied the menu for something else. Beers for $3/$4 seemed pretty standard, but then she told us that we could get some wine. Wine with an alligator sausage butty and chips? Sounded a bit odd, but then she said something amazing. A litre of wine, albeit the house (and probably the only) wine, was $5. Yup, you read that right. A LITRE of wine for $5, or about £3.50. Well, you know the Gray boys, never turn our noses up at a ludicrously cheap drink deal like that, so we ordered the house white and awaited our “authentic” New Orleans meal. There was a reason it was a litre for $5. Nice enough, sure, but very sweet and probably below 10% alc. The alligator butty was very nice too, almost chorizo-like in its taste and texture, and a large portion too, much like the ones we had been expecting on our jaunt across the USA.

Mmmmmm, nice bit of 'gater!

We had also heard about a bar, on Bourbon Street, called Pat O’Briens. Having being recommended to us as something you HAVE to do in New Orleans we thought we’d take a trip there, with our bellies full of alligator and cheap wine. THE drink to have was a Hurricane, a cocktail with ingredients that nobody actually seemed to be able to identify. We both decided that “as we are on a tight budget” we would probably not be sampling these concoctions, and would rather plump for a beer instead. After being ordered to buy a beer immediately after entering a bar the night before, with the price of said beers being $6.25, we looked around the place and realised we probably weren’t gonna be able to get a Big Ass Beer for 3 bucks. And actually, when we looked around, there was nothing special about the place. It was still pretty early though and most people probably weren’t going to come out the night after Independence Day, so we turned on our heels and went off to find a liquor store to top up the faithful hip flasks. The rest of the evening was a relaxing one – watching (something like) America’s 20 Dumbest Criminals and making the rest of our sandwiches for the next day and the up-coming Greyhound trip to Fort Worth. We had secured accommodation, so all we needed to do was make sure we hit all our connections and get into Fort Worth nice and early...