you can take the girls out of ole miss

Ok, Andrew gets the award for driving 10 hours with only 1 stop for gas with only a medium amount of road rage. And I get the award for not needing a bathroom break every hour like I usually do. Anyway we made it to new orleans. It was dark and the madness has begun. We started our wild weekend by eating dominos pizza in bed and going straight to sleep. The next morning i woke up way tooooo excited. If you are lucky enough to remember the original em in the states circa 2014 you will know I studied abroad at Ole Miss (read all about it here) and during a Brit Lit class another girl asked me if I had a one direction phone case as she was really into them. And thus began the unstoppable friendship of Em and Hillary. 

To be able to reunite 7 years later (6 years since we last met up) was both unbelievable and incredible. Hillary drove down to New Orleans on Saturday morning giving me regular updates and I also found out she would be staying 2 rooms down from us in the hotel. I peeked out of our hallway view window (classy) and she was arriving at her door. With one shoe on, I ran and hugged her!!! We walked around the area a little bit that morning catching up and sharing stories and then went back to meet Andrew. He has a friend he works with in England who was also visiting family in New Orleans the same time and he invited us all over to come hang out at his parents house. On the way we stopped at a 2 story target to pick up some snacks and drinks to bring with us. We stayed there a few hours and got talking to his wife, parents and kids. It also gave me and Hillary an opportunity to chill and catch up more which was perfect! 

His mum even cooked ribs, jambalaya, potato salad and beans - a classic southern meal. After we left we went back to the hotel and changed ready to hit the town!!! We made it about 200ft down the world famous Bourbon Street and ducked right inside Hard Rock Cafe at the soonest opportunity. We each had burgers and seltzers while Andrew treated himself to a cocktail. Hillary started feeling a little sick so I suggested we go back across to the hotel to get her some medicine then head back out. By the time we got back to the hotel we all decided we would just stay in!

The next morning we explored the French quarter. We had beignets for breakfast from Cafe du Monde.  

We wandered through the french market where I bought a few souvenirs. And we walked all along the streets exploring more shops. We also found the horse and carts so we had to recreate the world famous drunk selfie we took with the police horses all those years ago.

We decided to take a streetcar ride too so we rode it to the end of the line and waited for it to go back again to where we came from. We had so much fun just chatting, laughing and being ridiculous the whole time. There was no plan it was just go with the flow which was perfect. 

Andrew and I had a 5 hour drive ahead of us so we decided we should get going. I promised Hillary it wouldn’t be so long before we could see eachother again. There’s a theme to this trip… Seems like we’ll be back soon I hope! We set off, stopped about 30 minutes in to fill up the car and drove the whole rest of the way. He was showing me the sights of Louisiana and we went through this one tiny farm village which had no nothing for about 30 miles! But when we reached the town they did have a dry cleaners so they were set! When we reached Andrews house we had a quick check round and then went to eat at Sonic. 

  

More adventures to follow while we’re out here.