new orleans

Amazingly leaving nearly on schedule, we popped into Tallahassee for lunch with Angelica at Three Guys. Yes, in case you were wondering, the Caesar salad is still the best ever. I always love seeing that girl and discussing previous/future gypsy adventures. NYC awaits you woman! 

We proceeded to New Orleans where we had arranged to stay with Aaron via couchsurfing.org. After finally speaking on the phone to Aaron rather than through email and commenting “Hm, that’s not what I expected him to sound like, and I think he said something about a wife”, Shawn decided maybe he should take a second look at Aaron’s profile so we could be slightly more informed houseguests. He had after all sent out quite a number of requests in the previous week so everyone was sort of muddling together. We then discovered that Aaron was not only married but also had a young son. We hadn’t exactly calculated a toddler into our plans for New Orleans. But it turned out to be perfectly fine as Aaron’s wife spent her every waking minute tending to Ze-ev (his name, yes) and Aaron showed us around the town after cooking an AMAZING chicken dinner with Israeli salad. 

The French Quarter was adorable with its European style architecture and cute shops and galleries. We had the requisite beignets and café au laits at Café du Monde and stopped into an absinthe bar where some chick dressed as a pirate proceeded to give us a 10 minute long schpiel on the history of absinthe. Bourbon Street, I will leave you to the Mardi Gras crowd. We did of course have to have one Hand Grenade which if I had to guess was 50% alcohol and 50% sugar. Mas o menos. 

We then headed to where the locals hang and saw an impromptu grunge show then wandered to what I thought was a pizza place, but actually turned out to have awesome live blues. What luck! By this point Aaron had gone home so we wandered some more, of course got lost, I sat in a tree, and we finally got a cab and made it safely to the lovely loft at Aaron’s house.