To sum up the last few weeks, we have been hitting the library at all hours of the day, turning in papers left, right and centre and eating way too much bad food from the union. 14 hour days on campus are no joke here. But, we got through it, I have finally finished a hellish 3 weeks of midterm assessments which should have lasted one week but nooooo and so this weekend, we decided to hit up the craziest city in the States.
Because of our crazy timetables, me and Heather couldn't get out of our class on Friday afternoon so had to get the night bus, which regardless we were pretty excited about.
At 2am at our pittstop we were pretty hyped, still don't understand why drinks are SO oversized here?
We reached the hotel after sitting in a parking lot waiting for a taxi for almost an hour at about 7am, got a few hours sleep and headed into town. Our taxi driver actually took us on a tour around the more upper class part of town first before dropping us off at the famous French Quarter.
Unfortunately, the queue for Cafe DuMonde went all the way down the street so instead we continued walking and came across a cute outside cafe that had live jazz music (which took me back to my school big band days- the even played Birdland) and an all you can eat buffet for breakfast.
The food was really good actually and then we headed back into town to wander into some of the creepy voodoo/souvenir shops and to explore the street artists. This part of the day really reminded me of my trip to Brighton (do you know the part I mean Danae, can't remember what its called) and really made me miss our cute British seaside towns.
After wandering around the side streets some more, we went to go see the river which we didn't even realise was the Mississippi River, the only thing Mississippi is actually known for! I thought this was so cool, as you may have guessed from my Lake Sardis post, I have a thing for water I think it looks so beautiful haha!
These trams are really cool too, they are called Streetcars here, like in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire which was actually set here.
After the river, we wandered back into town and managed to find the world famous Bourbon Street which was interesting to see during the day as it gets pretty wild at night.
We found another little outdoor cafe down this street with more live music and decided to try Beignets which are a type of doughnut that New Orleans is apparently really famous for. We also bought some of the classic Mardi Gras beads that you see all over New Orleans and put those on!
Later on for dinner, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe which is always an incredible experience especially as the servers are always so enthusiastic. Our football game against LSU (New Orleans' closest college team) was also on there so we got to watch that but we won't talk about how that went.
It was also really nice for us to just sit together and have a nice meal and share some stories about our home lives with eachother too, we don't often do that because we are so wrapped up in our lives over here!
After dinner, we hit up Bourbon Street which was such a surreal experience. Charlotte was actually pretty accurate when she described it as "a maga strip but for middle aged people"! You have to go and see Bourbon Street at night!!
The people on the balconies above the bars have a whole load of the Mardi Gras beads which they throw down to passers by on the street and you have to put them on. I think you're actually supposed to flash them in return which obviously we didn't!
New Orleans is crazy, there's no doubt about that. But definitely one of those places you have to visit at some point. Preferably when you are over 21 since hardly any of the bars will let you in but we spent the whole night out on the street like a whole load of other people did, you don't really even have to go into the bars to experience Bourbon Street at its finest! Just sit back and watch the night happen.
I'll be back with more adventures hopefully soon!
My lovely mum and Ed are coming to visit me next week to see what my new life over here is like! They will love it I can't wait for them to experience the Rebel Spirit. But I am hoping to have a tonne of photos of their stay in Oxford and we will do lots of fun things together!
Speak soon
Em x
PS. I'm not even going to apologise for the length of this post, you should know by now I can't be concise!
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