Bourbon in New Orleans

I'm going to dedicate an entire post to bourbon.

I've never really liked bourbon much. It really used to annoy me when I asked for Rum and Coke at Union Jacks in Brisbane and they would accidently give me bourbon and the sweetness of the alcohol would slap me straight across the face. But after being in New Orleans, I feel I've developed a respect for bourbon.

Not so much for the alcohol itself. I still think it's gross. But bourbon in terms of the AAE Bourbon House Hostel and Bourbon Street, New Orleans.

I really struck it lucky at the AAE Bourbon House Hostel and would encourage anyone travelling to New Orleans in the future to stay there. The couple who run the hostel are young, hip and so willing to help out travelers. They even dropped me at the Greyhound station the day I checked out. The hostel rooms are nothing flash - your average uncomfortable bed - and it's a little distance out of the city, but it's got a great communal vibe about it, which really makes a difference in a hostel.

I was fortunate enough to be sharing the hostel with about 10 camp counselors from around the country - a few Brits, a few Aussies and not to mention, a few hotties, and simply having camp in common got us all off on the right foot. They took me in and they took me out.

Bourbon Street may be trashy in the harsh light of day, but at night time, the street comes into it's own. Between the 8pm and 11pm, the street is full of the live music you come to New Orleans to see. After that, the bars wind up their disco balls and many turn into clubs. The particular weekend I was there was also Mardi Gra, bringing a whole other aspect to the people of the street. Everywhere you looked there were semi-naked men, all covered in shiney plastic beads they would eventually palm off to us as we made our way down the street.

So my last night in New Orleans was spent appreciating 'the bourbon' - the friendships, the alcohol and the street - and at 8am the next morning, covered in dancing sweat and strings of plastic beads, I boarded a Greyhound bound on a 10hr trip to Memphis, Tennessee.

Ciao for now. xo

City Life, Spooks and Cemetaries

Despite not being one for horror movies, spooky stories or ouiji boards, I decided to put on my big girl pants and spend the morning with the ghosts and graveyards of New Orleans.

Lying alongside the Mississippi River, the city has long been prone to flooding and the locals soon realised that when they buried their dead in the ground, the floods would wash the bodies back up to the surface. To counteract this, the many cemetaries in New Orleans became filled with mausoleums - large marble or cement (depending of finances) tombs to house the bodies. In the old days, funerals were followed by a funeral procession where the congregation would walk the hearse to the cemetary singing melancholy gospel tunes.

The St Louis Cemetary is the most famous of the many cemetaries in New Orleans and is a mixture of decrepid mausoleums and extravagant dedications to the dead. The tombs stand gaurded by wrought iron bars and crucifixes, with a few still remembered by collections of fading or wilting flowers.

Moving from site to site was a little spooky - I'll admit - and it felt like at any minute a gangly dead hand was going to shoot out of the ground and grab my unexpecting feet. St Louis Cemetary 1 (as there are two within a short walk of each other) is also now home to  Marie Laveau, New Orleans anointed 'voodoo queen' (just to make things a little creepier). Marie was believed to have special voodoo powers and many people still come to her tomb in search of her wisdom and blessings. The belief is that after asking Marie's guidance or wisdom, hopefuls must leave a donation at her grave site. When their need is fulfilled, they must return to her grave and mark three x's (XXX) in honour of her help. Hence why, her cement crypt is covered in what appears to be grafitti.

There are plenty of tours which visit the tombs (day tours, night tours, full moon tours, ghost tours, scandelous cocktail tours) which I'm sure indulge in the spooks of the city. But walking around the cemetary in the middle of the day, was all the creep I needed.

Ciao for now. xo

Jazzed To Be Here

Imagine if Byron Bay and the Amsterdam Red Light District had a love-child - all the blues-tooting, grass-smoking genetics of Byron Bay mixed up in a petrie dish with the bright lights and dirty street germs of Amsterdam. What do you get?

New Orleans.

Sorry, N'awleans.

As I flew out of Miami, bound for The South, the realisation that I was going to New Orleans and would probably end up dead in a drive-by-shooting really hit home. I believe, 'Kristen, what the hell are you freaking doing? Are you crazy? Are you freaking crazy for walking so blatantly to your GRAVE?!!' passed through my head a few times before we touched down on the tarmac.

But New Orleans is not the delapidated dive I expected. The city is a bustling hub of street cars shuffling people between districts, as old, toothless men blast jazzy tunes from the sidewalks. The houses stand two, three stories high, supported by pillars and curling cast-iron gates where hanging plants dangle like christmas decorations.

Like most major cities, there seems to be more tourists than locals, but those native to New Orleans possess a pleasant and polite kindess that identifies them from the crowd of photo-snappers. On my arrival at the AAE Bourbon House Hostel, the receptionist was helpful enough to show me where everything was in relation to the hostel and how to get there. It's these simplicities that make travelling alone not quite as daunting.

It was a relief to be able to wander around the city today with only my self and my feet to determine the direction. The French Quarter, the main draw-card of New Orleans, is a standard block layout and is easy to negotiate with a map. Bourbon Street, much like Kings Cross or the Red Light District, is where the music and mayhem happens at night. But in the cruel light of day, all its dirty corners and cheap illuminated strip joints look trashy and tasteless. Stores selling cheaps New Orlean nicnacs are everywhere - everything from magnets and postcards to feathered masks and giant plastic necklaces sporting peace and marijuana symbols.Turn off Bourbon and onto Royal Street and you meet a totally different vibe, with gallery after independent gallery line the street walk.

Around lunch time, the hopeful musicians begin to drag their music cases out into the street and turn the place into an outdoor jazz club. This, served with a side of Gator and Shrimp Gumbo is exactly how lunch should be spent. It's easy to enjoy their sexy, sultry sounds and think nothing more of it, but at the end of the day, they're just as much a business as the restaurant you're eating at. It's something the New Orleanians seem to respect and appreciate and the tip jars and music cases are consistently filled with beer-soaked one dollar bills.

It's been five years since Hurricane Katrina ripped a wound through the heart of New Orleans and while the city has rebuilt itself, 'the storm' is still referred to in quiet reverence by tourists and locals alike. The storm remains a historical scar that is referred to much like Christ's crucifiction - 'before the storm' and 'after the storm'. Tours can be taken along the Mississippi River where the majority of Hurricane Katrina's damage was directed, but like visiting Ground Zero, there seems to be something immoral about turning a memorial into a tourist exploit.

As much as I'd like to think I'm safe walking from place to place, I can't help but feel like I'm looking over my shoulder 99 percent of the time. Down Town and the Garden District feel like safe havens, but there are definitely areas you wouldn't want to wander into in the middle of the day, let alone after dark. Going for a 'wander' is potentially dangerous, as the good and bad streets seem to be intermingled. 'Walk where the crowds are walking' was the advice I was given and that's what I've been doing, with one hand clutched firmly around my bag.

But I'm okay, Mum. I promise.

Off to get some gator sausage. Delish.

Ciao for now. xo