Day forty-six

So where to start. I’m in New Orleans, it’s Sunday, and there seems to be painfully little to do, short of drinking some more.

Let’s step back a few. Or, more like a week! Last Sunday I spent the afternoon by and in the pool, before I headed out to see Sex and the City with one of the peeps from the club that weekend, instead of going to the Miss USA pageant thing. It was pretty damn good, apart from being interminably long. We hung out back at where he’s staying with his sister’s family afterwards.

It’s this incredibly palatial southern colonial style home, very similar to the homes in Gone With the Wind. All the houses in this part of town were like that, which also was just around the corner from my hotel, the club, AND the cinema. The place next door was even bigger with big white pillars etc. Apparently it’s all tied up in “old money”, so it really is very much like Gone With the Wind!

Monday I went on quite the lengthy book search. It didn’t help that Memphis seemed to be severely lacking in shops, let alone book shops, let along decent book shops. I ended up going back out to the mall near the botanic gardens where Jewel played, and then later discovered this place called Bookstars where I picked up a Terry Pratchett book called The Last Continent (which I’ve probably read before) after a good two hours of deliberation through numerous aisles.

(Fast-forward to now; I read about 50 pages of the book both on the train and just now in the hotel, and it’s boring and lame. I’m not going to read any more, and start re-hunting for a book in San Fran - at least there I know where to find books!)

Monday night there was a massive, loud, thundery storm. Being on the eighth floor of the hotel, I ran across the road for some ice cream, opened my curtains right up and watched the lightning and rain from the comfort of bed whilst watching some Doctor Who and partaking in the ice cream - which was chocolate with gooey marshmallow, a caramel swirl, and fudge fish and cows. DELICIOUS.

Tuesday I went to Graceland; Elvis’s home, and resting place. I was expecting just some house, but damn if it wasn’t some hopped-up 70s disco-land of a home. Mirrors EVERYWHERE. The stairs down to the basement had mirrors floor-to-ceiling, and across the roof. The pool room had pleated fabric all over the walls AND ceiling. The kitchen was probably the most tame room in the house, although that’s made up by the fact that’s where Elvis ate his odd favourite food; the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. I had one of these at the restaurant across from Graceland, and it turned out to be pretty tasty,

Tuesday in general was a day of pigging out. Not only did I have that sandwich, and some KFC snacky things, but I went to the “BBQ” place too. What it basically is is “pulled” pork - think shredded meat - cooked and served in a hickory smoked sauce, served in a bun with coleslaw. You can get a side of beans in the same sauce too, which tasted really good.

That afternoon I also toured Sun Studios, so it was kind of Piggy Music Day or something. Sun Studios has a huge history in music recording, having discovered Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and, um, a couple other really big names from the time. We got to see the actual recording studio - and the actual microphone (which you could touch and be photographed with) - that they used. That exact studio and microphone are still in use after tour hours by bands such as Matchbox Twenty and U2.

Wednesday was my last day in Memphis. I went down to the South Main district, which is the historical area, mainly to find out exactly where my train was supposed to leave from at a stupendously early hour in the morning the next day. Down there they also have the National Civil Rights Museum, which was built out of the hotel where Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated. It was a very, very good museum, both eye-opening and humbling. You can stand almost right where Martin Luther was killed (the hotel there has been preserved), and then you follow the museum to the other side of the road and can stand almost right where the shooter was that killed him. That was pretty spooky.

On the way back I walked up the Mississippi River and saw one of the classic steamboats taking a tour down the river :). It’s very wide, and very muddy. I went out to dinner with the same guys from the weekend that night, to this tapas bar in a nearby entertainment district. I love tapas. This particular place does tapas and cocktails through to about 10pm, then wheels out a DJ and turns one half of the restaurant into a dancefloor. It was great. In the section we were in, they have normal tables, and then japanese-style short tables with cushions, and even a bed-area you can lay about and eat and drink in. It rocked.

The next morning I got up way too early so I could check out and get down to the train station. I keep having to say goodbye to this incredible people I meet. And go on to some new city where most of the time I don’t know anyone or anything, and rebuild knowledge and relationships from stage one again. And it’s just getting tougher and tougher. Every time I’m in transit I start getting all morose and thinking about cutting my holiday short. Still not sure about that. I have a rather expensive ticket to Cher in mid August in Las Vegas, and frankly if I make sure I make it that far, I may as well make it through the following two weeks that lead to my two-week wind-down in Hawaii and complete my holiday as planned. It wouldn’t be too hard to sell that ticket though. And honestly, I’m really not into Cher.

With Brazil off the holiday menu (did I mention that? I’m not going to Rio anymore; visa troubles), there’s a week or two hole in my schedule, which doesn’t help. I’m cutting Denver as well - for one thing I don’t know why I’m going there anymore (it was to see the Rocky Mountains, but screw them), so that opens up a window from July 22 when I leave Mexico to about the first week of August when I planned to get into Las Vegas. Potentially going to Miami after Mexico for a week or so. *shrugs* It’s getting so confusing.

I guess that’s part of why I’ve been having a bit of a time out here in New Orleans. I got in Thursday afternoon, and it’s now Sunday, and all I’ve really done is a concert that THursday night, and a lot of walking around the French Quarter and the Warehouse district, and some of the river’s edge. I haven’t been out at night properly. And when it comes down to it, New Orleans is a city for adults, that really comes to life at night. You can buy a drink at one pub, walk down the street with it and into another, drinking the whole way. Legally.

They’ll either automatically give your drink in a plastic cup (as drinks in glass/bottles are the only ones not allowed in the street), or they will ask you “is that bacardi and coke to stay or to go?” and then use a glass or a plastic cup. And every second store sells alcohol. There’s what seems to be a chain of stores that show up with the same frequency of Starbucks in New York that have walls of frozen daiquiri’s to choose from to takeaway.

And then there’s the New Orleans’ signature drinks, the Hand Grenade and the Hurricane. The Hand Grenade is supposedly the most potent drink available in the French Quarter (and it’s not too bad), but I haven’t tried a Hurricane yet. Even so, you kind of end up drinking at all hours of the day because of this, and also because the cocktails are all frozen, so they make for great stinking-hot-weather drinks.

I just stumbled across the concert on Thursday night, and was lucky they still had tickets. Tickets were only US 28.50 as well, which is an incredible price. It was Kate Voegele, Australia’s The Veronica’s (seriously, what the hell?), and Natasha Bedingfield, in this venue called House of Blues. The venue itself was fantastic. You can tell they do a lot of concerts in there. I’m not big on Natasha Bedingfield, who was the headliner, but it was tempting to go see because of the Veronica’s, and the price.

The Veronica’s were horrrrrrible. Not their own fault though, not sure if they did a soundcheck or not, but you could not hear them one bit. It was all the band. Poor things, because it seemed to be one of their first ever gigs in the US. They mentioned that the merchandise stand in the venue was THE ONLY place in the whole USA where you could buy their album.

Natasha sounded really good though, and did this fantastic cover of Ray of Light. But, and here was the big disappointment for me, was she didn’t do the one song I really like of hers, I Wanna Have Your Babies. *sad face* Other than that, like I mentioned, I haven’t been up to much else here. I went through Harrah’s Casino. Casino’s fascinate me. The lights, the people, the design. And I have been eating a LOT here.

I heard New Orleans being described as “the city that reserves taste for mealtimes”, which is both hilarious and also oh so true. It’s pretty trashy, and really tasty. The famous Bourbon St is packed with strip clubs, private dancers, and the like (in between the multitude of pubs and cocktail shops, and the odd family restaurant). But the food, OMG the food. It’s pretty much cajun and hot sauce here, fantastic. I’ve had gumbo, a shrimp po-boy, catfish, and so much more. No jambalaya just yet, but I’ll get round to it!

Gumbo is a kind of soup, a po-boy is basically a type of sub, but my favourite so far was a meal at this place called Daisy Dukes. The south is big on catfish, and DD’s does a “blackened catfish platter”. It was two pieces of catfish (blackened :P), cajun roast potatoes, roast vegies, a side salad, white wine mushroom sauce, and garlic bread, with cajun spices all round the edge of the plate - all for only US 12.95. And it was packed with taste. Catfish is delightful.

There's a lot of stores that sell cajun spices, and various types of hot sauce. And I want to buy them all and mail them all home. It might be easier to order from home though. USA Foods should sell some of them, I would think... Hopefully...

So that’s basically everything up to date. It has certainly made good use of this previously useless Sunday afternoon. Ok, so there *is* things I could do. I just feel like chilling out at the moment though. I’m kind of tired of doing something all the time. The Audobon “Insectarium” opened just last week, so I want to go to that, and to the Voodoo Museum. There’s not much to add, other than any general stuff I’ve noticed.

The only thing I can think of currently is that boardies as day-to-day wear seems to be something that is pretty uniquely Australian. Americans tend to either wear khaki’s or, more often, those shiny athletic/basketball shorts. Which seems really silly to me, as they’re heavy, thick, and don’t breathe terribly well. Not exactly clever summer wear. It’s really easy to spot other Australians primarily from sight for that reason; we either wear boardies, or denim shorts.