Day 11 - New Orleans, Louisiana.

We drove across three state borders in three hours today - how about that! The explanation is simple - Alabama and Mississippi both have tiny coastlines, while Florida and Louisiana stretch out and cover most of the coast.

Anyway, we set foot in both the states we drove through while stopping for gas and coffee. That makes our total number of visited states 13! Here's a list in chronological order:

-New York
-New Jersey
-Delaware
-Maryland
-District of Columbia
-Virginia
-North Carolina
-South Carolina
-Georgia
-Florida
-Alabama
-Mississippi
-Louisiana

We'll go through at least another 14 or so before we head home, but we're pretty much done with the 'small' ones now. Big states like Texas and California where we have a lot to see will take a long time of course.

Well! Here we are now in New Orleans. We're already loving most of it. It's of a manageable size and we're staying within walking distance of everything we want to see. The French legacy runs deep here and the city is in one word: burlesque. The old part of town is called the French quarter and the two busiest streets are Bourbon and Royal. Royal is lined with art and antiques shops and quaint cafes while Bourbon is all about music, bars, strip clubs and cheap souvenirs. It's like the red light district in Montmartre, only more open, with more neon signs and ten times louder.

That's just one street though - in general the French quarter is beautiful. The house fronts are well known all over the world and just as pretty as you imagine them:


Some houses are more run down than others, but they're all lovely:

We've seen doughnuts before (of course!), but these square ones are a New Orleans speciality, called Beignets. They were absolutely delicious! We had them at the Cafe du Monde, which serves only coffee and Beignets - one of the most popular haunts of both tourists and locals.

We went for a couple of drinks at a bar and walked around the town after nightfall. On virtually every corner there's street musicians. The overall skill is a lot higher here than in other cities we've been to and one jazz band in particular was really good! Here's a shot of Bourbon street at night:

Tomorrow we're off on a lunch cruise on the Mississippi river on a steamer! We'll see if we can catch a glimpse of Marie Laveau's grave as well - she was reputedly the queen of voodoo back in the day.

Au revoir!