New Orleans - Email from Caro

After the pilgrimage to Graceland, we hopped on the "City of New Orleans" Train and rode down from Memphis to New Orleans, tired and wet.  Tired because we'd been up since 5am and wet because it was suddenly monsoon season.  As the taxidriver said "Yo sho are up early dis mornin'.  Yo shoulda got yo'selves a boat to da station, yessur!".  Actually, I think he was the best taxidriver ever, one of these philosopher types that rambles 
on and on, whether you're awake or not. 
 
Travel Tip: Don't bother to phone a taxi in Memphis unless you really really need one.  We had a couple of Taxi crisis situations.  On one occassion, the booking woman told me, after I phoned to complain about waiting for 30 minutes, the cabbie had been past our hotel 3 times and didn't see us and wouldn't be back a 4th time because we were wasting his time.  My arse.  Bad words were said and Kiwis are probably no longer welcome in Memphis.  Still, she probably thought I was Australian anyway. 
 
Anyway, so when we board the train, we discover it has been overbooked and we have to sit next to other people (thank god, I had a stash of magazines).  My experience of Amtrak trains in the States was that whoever sits next to you must launch into their life story, boring you to death with their funny little anecdotes.  At this time of the morning, do I look like I give a sh*t? At 6.45am its all too depressing for me. 

Due to the overbooking, the train was still sitting in Memphis at 8.00am ("Symon, if anybody tries to tell me we can't have these seats, they'll get a friggin' earful from me.  I'm not getting off this train" and on and on I went.  I think Symon was quite grateful he didn't have to sit next to moaning arse all the way to The Big Easy).  It's just I'm not a morning person, you know. 
 
As it turns out, I sat beside an artist named Priscilla, a Memphis local and travelling down to New Orleans to see her grandchildren and scope out galleries.  A few minutes after introducing ourselves, I discovered that Priscilla was as evil as myself.  Excellent.  I found my new best friend: we cackled and talked evilly of others on the train (Priscilla nudged me one point to turn around and look at a hugely large woman in a fetching terry cloth outfit snoring her head off, mouth open and half hanging off the seat.  Priscilla took a photo and it was then I realised me and P were going to have fun).  We harassed Symon, bitched about the service, talked about Memphis and the shooting incident, had lunch (and dessert) and met another lady, Jana, who was a 71 year old Southern Belle and tough as old leather boots. We had a hilarious trip down to New Orleans and even got ourselves invited to Jana's for lunch and a few vodkas one afternoon. Nice. 
 
We arrived in New Orleans, watched a Visitor Information Guy get stuck into a Visitor, shouting and waving his arms about because he was using the telephone, and then lectured us on "being careful in this city. Its a bad place for some people".  OK, so there's a shooting in Memphis and now we're in the "bad place", whose big bloody idea was this? 
 
As it turns out, New Orleans rocks the big Kahuna. Its is one of the best places we've stayed.  We stayed at the Monteleone Hotel, in the heart of the French Quarter, having booked through our hotel reservation network that gives you impossibly cheap rates for classy establishments.  Immediately upon check-in, we could feel the stares from the other guests.  Did we look that bad? Did I remember deodorant this morning? Looking about, it seems I should have been wearing hideous old lady gold shoes and gold 
chains, holding a large tote bag, with my perm hair set (circa 1965) and blouse and slacks, linen of course. Oh, and matching suitcases, darling, on coasters. Instead, we marched in wearing the trusty jeans and T shirts with backpacks on, no tip for the bellboy, we carried our own bags, Mate. 
 
Once we were there, "N'awlins" was action all the way: 
 
Other guests having major domestics in the hallway for a couple of hours.  Security were called and it was all on for another hour or so.  The walls were paper thin and I'm pretty positive there were some pervy sex game things happening next door.  Symon was asleep.  He is never around when the interesting things start happening, like when I was propositioned in the lift in Toronto by a French couple for a threesome. 
 
I set the smoke alarms off by having a cigarette.  Twice.  Security was knocking on our door in seconds. Instead of de-stressing myself and relaxing having a ciggie, instead I inhaled, the alarm went off, I coughed and nearly shat myself, my blood pressure now skyrocketing out of control. 
 
"Excuse me, Sir, we have a report you're smoke alarm has been activated." 
 
"Yes, my girlfriend just lit a cigarette." 
 
"Were you standing directly underneath the alarm, Ma'am?" Totally peeved.  I hate being called Ma'am. Obviously my Estee Lauder Light Source SPF 15 with retinoids and AHAs are not doing their anti-ageing job.
 
"No" 
 
"Ma'am why are you standing in the corner?  Are you scared because of the alarm?" 
 
Hello? Did you not get eyes for Christmas? 
 
You got up to our room so fucking quickly, I have not had time to put my bloody jeans on! I am standing here, with a mangled cigarette, attempting to hide my lower half behind the bed, looking like a prat, you blind bastard.
 
"No" 
 
"We'll send Maintenance up to reset the alarm, sir.  Ya'll have a good night."  
 
I spent the remainder of the week, flapping a map of New Orleans about everytime I exhaled.  I only got caught once more, exhaling around the alarm.  Why bother having a smoking room option if the smoke alarms are so sensitive?
 
Hey, it was all adding to the experience, along with the Jazz playing buskers, the Blues crooning buskers, the Voodoo museum, finding our lovely little cafe where we went nearly everyday and had yummy coffees, poking about in gorgeous little shops, taking photos of the seriously old and rickety buildings with iron lacework and brightly painted colours, going on a tour of the city with a Professor from the University and getting the real story of the area and not just the usual tourist crap, drinking vodka from very large tumblers, neat, with a 71 year old woman with an amazing history, and a penchant for disliking her husbands and a bawdy lifestyle. 
 
The Pharmacy Museum was pretty amazing.  It was filled with all manner of weird and wonderful things: glass eyes, leeches in jars (accompanied with gory photos of some mangled guy's leg), lashings of arsenic and strychnine, vicious looking dentistry instruments (pure cocaine was applied to toothache).  Samples held in glass cabinets, the early asthma "inhalators" looked to me, more like bongs, complete with old water.  Enormous rectal dilators were used to cure nervousness.  I think just waving it about in front of someone would do the trick.  There was an entire display of the uses of cannabis in its various forms and examples of medicinal usage and associated instruments.  Another cabinet was dedicated to "Women's Remedies" (yes, we all what that means) which also contained medicine for nervous disability, fainting, and constipation (hmmm).  In fact, there were so many drugs and poisons, it’s amazing the place has never been robbed. There was morphine, syringes, opium and laudanum, cannabis, cocaine... and a very disinterested woman behind the counter.  Entry was a donation of $2. 
 
What else did I learn besides the many usages for a rubber hose? Never leave the hotel without an umbrella.  Jerry Springer graduated from the local university.  Gold or silver painted mime shows are annoying here, too.  Watching someone standing still for an indefinite amount of time does not make me want to give them money -it causes me fight the urge to push them over. Levi's has released a TV ad with the "Copa Cabana" as the theme music (I always knew "Bazza" rocked).  AT & T phonecards are a goddamned rip-off.  $20 for 15 minutes of talking.  What the hell is that?  Walking around in the thunder and lightning can "cure nervousness" as well. 
 
I was a bit sad to leave N'awlins and people who ask "How's yo Momma?" meaning "How's life and everything and your family and what's the latest goss with you then?", but we were bound for Fort Lauderdale and South Beach, Miami.  Nice.