WEEK 18 - NEW ORLEANS - monday 23 and tuesday 24 august 2010

today we slept in, still so tired after disney and driving to new orleans! in the afternoon we headed to the movies [and paid our mobile phone bill!] and watched The Expendables. its a really cool movie, basic plot, kinda crappy cheesey lines in alot of places, some really good calls, but you basically go to watch it with no brain and just watch stuff explode and people get beaten up. your typical action movie, but that was completely fine with me, i love not having to think! :)
in the evening we headed with Louis to the local Irish Pub for pub quiz night, it was so much fun! i was very offended when they posed the question ‘what inhabited island is the first to see the sun in the new year?’. of course its the north island of new zealand! [not that other place that tried to suddenly impose daylight savings and steal it from us!]. but no. apparently we are a country and our north island does not count. so the answer was the Christmas Islands. are they inhabited? im so upset! stupid trick question! everyone is always stealing crap from us, honestly! ugh! first the pavlova, now this! anyway. anyone who wishes to enlighten me on this subject, please do, as im too lazy to google it myself.
my geography is not the best, considering when we started this trip, i had no idea the New York was on one side and LA was on the other. so bad. oh well, the best way to learn the geography of a country is to go there, so there you go!
we ended up coming 2nd equal with three other teams, two more points and we would have won, [stupid trick question made us lose].

today we headed out on a very important mission. to go to the fossil store that stocks clothing, not just the handbags and watches. there is a green and black cardigan that i want, its so cute! so we get there and i end up leaving with the cardi, a tshirt [a white one, can you believe it, not black!], a cute purple skirt [yes i bought a skirt and its coloured!], and a brown leather belt. this is the start of my new colourful wardrobe. no more wearing just black all of the time. [even though i love it]. but thats all the shopping for now. we are saving it for LA just before we fly home, at the outlet malls :)
then we headed into the Magazine street district, looked around and wandered the streets, there are so many funky neat little shops to look through and cafes, definately a must to visit when you come to New Orleans. you can spend hours, days even, just wandering around here.

in the evening we went out with Louis and his friends ritchie and vince, to an amazing little place that i cant remember the name of, that does outdoor cooking and eating.
so you go there, they have fairy lights strung up everywhere outdoors and a live band playing in the background, and bug spray for you on the tables [i totally needed it, within 30seconds of arriving i was being nailed by mozzies!]. they have a wine shop out the front, where you can buy nice wine and pay a $3 corkage and drink the wine out in the garden area with your dinner. to order your meal, you go up to the guys at the outdoor kitchen bbq and tell them what you want and they bring it to you. its so cool, and pretty cheap, you can eat there for two people with a really nice bottle of wine for $50.

after that place and clearing 4 bottles of wine between 5 of us [oops!] we headed to the ‘country club’, a gay bar and half naked swimming pool [you have o pay $7 to go out into the pool area, so no photos, sorry guys, i know you were looking forward to it], so someone bought us all some drinks, and they were playing emo/pop/rock [AFI, foo fighters] so it was a really random place, nothing quite seemed to match, but we had a great time!

final stop was Ritchie’s apartment in the french quarter. its really pretty and has a cute pool out the back that is half under the patio. he does a bit of building photography, so he was showing me his stuff, he also has an amazing watch collection, really cool stuff.