a boring day

the drive from Memphis to New Orleans on highway 55 was immensely boring. Very tall green trees lining the road on either side - for miles and miles and miles. Whatever cute or odd or ugly buildings, towns, houses might have been out there, well, we never saw them. Just trees.

After about 5 hours of this (really!) we neared New Orleans and all of a sudden we were looking at swampland, or bayou. This was cool! This was interesting! The roadway was raised - really a bridge for about 35 miles - with water, swamp, trees, and an occasional house (how?) on either side of the road. Rylan and I looked for alligators but they are not easy to see when you are zooming past at 70 mph.

Made it into the French Quarter and man, it's more than I expected. The streets are narrower than I thought - really one car wide with a lane of parking down one side. All streets are one way - this is a good thing, since two cars could never get past each other. The wrought-iron railings are everywhere and the buildings feel like they lean in on the street. It's Saturday and the streets are packed with tourists. Bourbon Street was wild - I thought Nashville's Broadway with the honky-tonks was wild, then I thought Memphis' Beale Street was wild but clearly I didn't know what wild is! and this is at 5 p.m. - just wait until night time!

And it's really really humid. Really. Supposed to rain tomorrow, too.