July 13th, 2001

Again... still no pictures. I'm writing this several days after the fact, so I'm trying to recall what I did on the 13th...

We didn't leave New Orleans right away... we figured we'd check out some of the sights around town during the day. Our first stop was Riverwalk, where we found the Cafe Du Monde. We sucked down a load of ben... bengi.. crap, I can't remember how you spell it. It's pronounced ben-yay. :P

Anyways... they're these delicious little french pastry things covered in powdered sugar. We washed them down with caffienated drinks... I had an iced mocha myself. We wandered around Riverwalk checking out the variety of shops and whatnot, then decided we wanted to check out the French Quarter.

We hop the riverside trolley and take it down to the Quarter and wander around. There's an immense farmer's market there where you can buy all sorts of food. Beyond that is a sort of bazarre market with a wide variety of... well... all sorts of things. Clothing, knick knacks, sunglasses, leatherwear, etc... etc.... all for dirt cheap. It kind of sucks... there's all sorts of quirky stuff around but I don't have any room in my suitcase for lots of extra things. Must make a mental note to come back here some day when I've got a little room in my bags.

From there we make our way towards Jackson Square so we can check out the street performers and other oddities that apparently inhabit it. Along the way we go in and out of some of the really off the wall stores that line the streets from here to there... antique shops and the like. We get to Jackson Square and we find that it is also fairly quiet... comparitively. There are a slew of fortune tellers out, as well as a guy dressed up like an Indian standing totally motionless in the sun. Very... odd.

I also poked around this enormous cathedral located off Jackson Square, named after St. Louis. Pope John Paul held service there about 10 years ago, according to an inscription on the front of the edifice. The inside of the church was amazing to behold... incredibly ornate architecture. Some pictures of it would be nice to have along with the text... and pictures were taken with Alie's camera. They'll make it up here eventually...

We soon tired of walking around and returned to Riverwalk to eat lunch. From there we returned to our hotel, picked up the car and made the drive to Pensacola. Like I've said, New Orleans is a nice place to visit... but it's smelly and kinda dirty. I wouldn't want to live there.

The drive across wasn't a picnic. I ran into yet another thing about Florida that I don't miss... a good old southeastern thunderstorm. This thing looked like something out of a Spielberg movie... massive pitch black thunderhead roiling across the landscape. I kept expecting the mothership to pop out and beam us all up. Then the rain hit... so hard you couldn't see more than a couple car lengths ahead of you.

We hit 2 more of these storms as we drive across... and run into a traffic jam in Mobile. Apparently the I-10 tunnel was closed. I figure out a way to bypass it by taking Highway 90 east and we don't lose much time.

I drop Alie and her sister off at their parents place then head over to my grandparents. I find out from them that my aunt and uncle will be at the beach for an airshow tommorrow... so I decide to go out in the morning to meet them. Then I turn in for the night.