The Great (North) American Road Trip: When The Saints Go Marching In (Louisianna)

Baton Rouge, LA

Before I begin tearing New Orleans a new one, I would like to tell you of a decent enough place to eat in Baton Rouge Louisiana. We found a place on Yelp called Louie’s Café. Louie’s was said to be a college diner staple. We saw a line outside, which is usually a good sign for the food to be good. We put our name on the list and waited for about 15 minutes or so. We sat at the counter and ordered up our food. The place was of the standard diner fare and when our food came it was pretty decent. I’m not sure if it was worthy of the high praise that we had heard of, but it was decent. Based on the portions of food to price though, I would say it was slightly above average. The small portions let us down as we were pretty darn hungry. We did however leave feeling very satisfied and it turned out pretty good. On to New Orleans we went.

New Orleans, LA

Things started out alright in Louisiana, as we had a good breakfast and New Orleans was always a place that I had wanted to visit. Things changed as soon as we started driving over water on the I-10 into the city. It was around this time that we noticed that the city was not focused on making it easy for unfamiliar drivers to navigate their city. The place is filled with signs that are incorrectly labeled and far to close to the exits that it is damn near impossible to get around correctly. When we finally made it to the exit we needed, we drove to the visitor’s center.

The visitor’s center was not much to look at, and consisted of a few brochures, but nothing exceptional, plus the people that were supposed to be at the desks were nowhere to be found. We made the best of what they had and grabbed what information we could. I even peeked over the counter at the desk and grabbed a fairly informative guide book with some maps in it. We then left the visitor’s center so we could head to the library, because we wanted to get online to find some info on the city and figure out what we wanted to do. As we pulled out of the parking lot we became lost immediately. One way streets are fairly stupid, especially when they are not in high traffic areas. Despite trying to follow the directions that Google maps GPS navigation gave us, we still had trouble getting around.

The people of New Orleans have a funny way of welcoming you to their city and they like to thank you for obeying the traffic laws by yelling, honking, and even flipping you off. Many of the great citizens greeted us by showing one, or even all of those appreciations that we felt greatly wanted in the city. We felt so damn welcomed that we wanted to show our appreciation by punching people in their throats. I have a theory on why all the people in New Orleans are assholes and it is as follows:

1. Hurricane Katrina hit forming two groups of people in the city.

2. Group A figured out that this was a perfect time to escape.

3. Group B sat around looking for handouts.

4. Group B then stayed there for five more years.

5. Group B has been crapped on for so long that they can’t help but feel like crap.

6. Group B then take out their frustrations on everyone they meet.

7. Group A lived happily ever after.

8. There is also a small group of people who stuck around, but learned to stay inside their houses and not bother anybody, who we will consider to be in group A.

Following the welcoming committee, we proceeded to the library, which happened to be the only one in the city that was open on a Sunday. I made a right into the street that I needed to turn on, but due to the stupidly placed one way sign that is only visible while you are on the street, I went the wrong way on a one way street. I was even ferociously approached by a security officer that pulled maybe an inch from our car to let us know what we had already discovered and we were in the process of flipping around. So he made a point to let us know we were going the wrong way by flashing his lights on and treating me like I’m a four year old on a tricycle. He then proceeded to speed off. Eventually, we did actually make it to the library.

At first glance the library looked as if Katrina had just been there, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel as we saw a sign that said the library was open during renovations. The scaffolding that surrounded the library left little room for parking but we pulled up and Jen hopped out to make sure that it was in fact open. She walked through the scaffolding and came to the door to be greeted by a sign that told us that the library was closed due to the air conditioner being broken. So, after our great journey to find this forsaken place, the light at the end of the tunnel was just an optical illusion.

With our luck being so great in the city, we decided to press it a little more and head down to the sculpture park that resided outside the city’s art museum. At this point it was already unbearably hot and it was barely ten thirty. We grabbed some bottles of water and soaked our bandanas in some ice water and threw them around our necks. The heat was hovering somewhere over a hundred degrees, which wouldn’t be all that bad if we were in the desert, but in the south that temperature is accompanied by a muggy humidity level of at least eighty five percent making it feel well worse. As soon as we left the air conditioning of the car the sweat started to bead down our faces. We powered through the heat and walked around the sculpture park for about an hour.

The sculpture park had a lot of interesting work from a great variety of artists. There were works from the well known likes of Claes Oldenburg to artists that were unfamiliar to me. Despite the crippling heat, we enjoyed walking through the park. From here we decided that it was far too hot to be walking around outside, so we started to think of things that we could do wither indoors or in the car. We decided that we would go to a movie, but nothing was playing for a couple hours, so we decided to drive around and look at some of the architecture in the French Quarter and surrounding areas.

We drove around and took in the part of New Orleans that was pleasant to be around, which is of course the buildings. From the distinctively unique graveyards to the French inspired home fronts, the buildings and inanimate objects around the city were great. If we could just get rid of all the pain in the ass people, it could be a place that I would want to be around a lot more. The above ground vaults in the cemeteries were creepy, but very interesting as well. They were all so different from one another that they were as much of a work of art as the sculptures we saw earlier in the day. The fabulous French inspired balconies hanging off the sides of buildings were great to look at as well. I really wish that the people were less shifty looking, because it seems like there is much to be proud of and appreciative around the city, but no one around seemed to care much.

Following our self guided exploration through the city, we decided it was time to get lost again so, we took it to the streets and meandered our way to find the movie theater. The maps looked simple enough, but the street signs thought otherwise. The signs in the city are extremely small and are conveniently placed on the opposite side of the street which makes it damn near impossible to read until you are right up on the street. Needless to say, we missed more than one turns. We eventually came to a railroad crossing that started to flash. We were a couple cars back and we waited patiently for the train to pass. A funny thing happened after the train passed, as the lights stayed flashing for a bit too long. This caused the few cars in front of us to impatiently, and rather idiotically, drive around the arm bar across the tracks. I wanted no part of this so I stopped at the bar. This caused the cars on the other side of the tracks to start driving over the tracks. A line of about twenty five cars drove over the tracks. When the line ended cars from behind me started passing me over so that they could get over the tracks. Finally, after being honked at a ridiculous amount of times I decided that maybe the bars were messed up and I proceeded to drive over the tracks. As we drove over tracks I could see a second train heading towards the road. I stepped on the gas a bit more and went on my way. The line of cars behind me kept on crossing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the train had to put its brakes on. We didn’t hear any crashing noises, but who knows, besides a couple less New Orleans natives wouldn’t be missed, would they?

We eventually made it to the movie theater. The plan was to see The Other Guys and then sneak over to see Inception. The plan went off without a hitch. The Other Guys was surprisingly better than I had expected, despite being fairly cheesy at parts, it had some pretty funny jokes and Will Ferrell rarely disappoints. Christopher Nolan has done it again as Inception was quite the movie. It was a good mix of highly intense visuals and action with a great sci-fi plot that, like most of his movies do, it keeps you guessing and thinking throughout the whole movie. It will most likely be up for some awards as it had that great mix of great acting along with a stellar script and film making.

The sky was dark when we walked out of the movie theater and I wanted to see Bourbon Street lit up at night, so we headed back downtown. The downtown area reminded me a bit of Las Vegas with all of its lit up buildings illuminated by the fluorescent neon bouncing through the alleyways. As expected we made a couple of wrong turns and somehow ended up driving down Bourbon Street. It was jam packed with intoxicated people that were not too worried about getting out of the way of our car. We weaved our way through the sea of people and as we thought about finding a parking spot, we came to the conclusion that we didn’t really feel comfortable leaving our car anywhere. Between the people and the heat we had come to the end of our wick and the candle still needed to make it through the night so we could find a place to sleep.

We had planned to sleep at a state park not too far from the city. The key word in the last sentence is planned, and just like everything else that happened on this day it didn’t work out quite as planned. The state park was not to be found. There were no signs or anything, so we went to our backup plan. As we drove towards our second campground at another state park, we found ourselves driving in circles. This was very frustrating as it was creeping closer and closer to midnight. We decided that we would just hit the highway and stay at a rest stop. We came to the first one around twelve thirty and with the way our luck was going, it did not allow overnight parking. Normally I would say to hell with that and just sleep anyways, but they actually had a security officer on the grounds, so that was pretty much a no go. We then drove to the next one that was about thirty miles down the highway. We arrived at the rest stop, but had to keep on cruising due to it being closed and blocked off. The next Rest stop wasn’t until Alabama. We made it Alabama around one thirty in the morning. We were so damn exhausted and finished with the day that we didn’t even bother to clear out the back to sleep. We crashed in the front seats as we were both fed up, uncomfortable, and unhappy. In fact that pretty much summed up how we felt about New Orleans in general. Despite our hellish stay, I am willing to give New Orleans a second chance, but only if we visit with someone who knows their way around the town and can chauffeur us where ever we go.