The BIG date was a GREAT DATE! At least it was great to us. If you haven’t been reading my blog much then, you may not know that I had a out of town date this past weekend. We actually got on a plane and went to another city just to bar hop. She had never flown on Southwest Airlines so she was very confused with the whole Group A concept. Needless to say, she wasn’t the least bit impressed with the whole “A7 and A8” on our boarding passes…oh well. It was a late flight after a long day. We were going to try to do dinner but we didn’t arrive until after 930pm. The driver picked us up and somehow, the car service had run out of sedans. We got lucky and were riding in a 10 passenger super stretch limo. We stopped at the first convenience store along the way and got some beer. And to really keep it classy, we each got a 40oz.. Mine was a Modelo. Hers was an Abita. We checked into the hotel and made a quick change and hit Bourbon Street. It was pretty much a pub crawl from there on. It was Bar after bar after bar. Some had live music, some had a DJ. But all of them were packed. The New Orleans economy seems to be fine… at least in the French Quarter. We even hit up one of those frozen drink places on the corner and had some of their house specialties.
Before we left, she kept telling me how nervous she was about the date/trip. I don’t know if it was the whole traveling part or if it was the sharing a room part or if it was going to a place that she had never been part. But she used the word “nervous” 2 or 3 times. She seemed to get over it pretty quickly. On the way back to the hotel at around 1:30 or 2, we realized that we had pretty much been doing nothing but drinking for the past 6 hours and had not eaten a bite. That’s when this guy right here brought out the big guns. “2 Lucky Dogs please!” Oh Yeah, those lucky dog hot dogs had never looked so good. That has to be the most money a person had ever spent to go get a hot dog. 2 round trip tickets to New Orleans and the only thing we ate while we were there were 2 hot dogs. Wow. We were smack dab in the middle of the Cajun food capital of the world and we had 2 hot dogs that we bought on the street. What is wrong with me? Anyway, we were so tired that as soon as we downed that marvelous late night dinner, we crashed out. Even the noise of Bourbon Street that was just below our balcony wasn’t enough to keep us awake. And of course the next morning at 6 when my built in alarm clock woke me up, I could still hear the serious party people going at it. I don’t know how they do it.
We got up at 8 and needed to soak up the last bit of New Orleans so we walked and searched for Café du Monde. We finally found it and the line had to have been 50 or 60 people deep. It was amazing. Neither one of us wanted to spend our last hour waiting in line so we wandered off again and found more frozen drink deliciousness. At some point, we wandered into one of the gift shops and she fell in love with a Boa the had so I bought it. It was a whopping $3.99. Not much of a souvenir but that’s what she wanted. She wore it for the rest of the day and night. We did manage to find this cool dive bar as we left Café du Monde called “Harry’s Corner.” At first we were the only ones there at 9am but others walked in. in fact, some of them were listeners from Longview. There were 4-5 couples and they apparently frequent the Harry Corner when they visit the Quarter. They were about the coolest people ever. I so want to be them. Just a group of friends traveling around, having fun.
So, that was the big date. No drama, no trouble, no sweat. Just a cool, quick trip to New Orleans for 15 hours. Next trip, Vegas baby!