Humide toujours.

America's Wetland. Every state has a motto and that's Louisiana's. Truly this is the wettest, sweatiest state I've ever been in. We rolled into New Orleans in the mid-afternoon on Sunday and checked into Hotel Provincial. It's in the middle of the French Quarter and is very quaint, very authentic.




Neither Laura nor I had ever been to NOLA previously, but it's pretty much an American equivalent to Amsterdam. The closest touch point's we've come across so far have been the douche district (pronounced "doo-shay") and the sex district (so many beads with penises). At the corner of Douche and Sex (actually Bourbon St.) a drunk hillbilly dude-bro came up to me and our interaction went like this:

Him: Is your name Lucky?
Me: No.
Him: Yes it is.
Me: No.
Him: *muttering nonsense to his nasty entourage as I walk away*

After dinner we spent a minute at a bizarre karaoke bar that Laura swears was completely staged because no natural environment could have been so strange. Over the course of the hour we spent there we saw a bunch of drunk lawyers bump and grind to various disco hits, teenage Gary Busey, a drunk girl who kept groping her blond friends (she left her friends of darker hair colors alone) and a cop on a horse stumbled in through a door momentarily. On the way back home we passed a ghost tour. The "guide" was drinking a beer on the street and rambling to his group while pointing to a nondescript second floor apartment. I want this job.

Right now it's thundering outside so we're holed up in our room waiting for a break in the clouds so we can traipse around one the nearby above-ground cemeteries. It's going to rule.