Track. Basin Street Blues- Glen David Andrews.
" One chord is fine, two chords are pushing it and three chords, and you're into jazz" Lou Reed.
Day 36.
It was a little overcast and rainy in the morning so after we had parked the RV at our really smart New Orleans campsite, we got a taxi to the festival site at the showground. It was very similar to a festival at home in many ways, mud, unusual clothing, beers being drunk before midday...but the music was really different. There were 3 large tents each with seating for around 500, jazz, blues and gospel. We checked all of them out and totally loved some of the acts they had. Some great blues and amazingly talented musicians.
There were a couple of heavy downpours, one of which soaked us through to our underpants, but the boys were snug in the pushchair under the raincover, dylan with sol on his knees. A real highlight was Glen David Andrews' set in the blues tent. He was a trombone player and blues singer with a full orchestra including the coolest and largest piano player on the planet. We danced till we were sweaty, especially dylan who was incorporating moves from all dance genres with great energy.
Topped the day off with Roy Ayers.....everybody loves the sunshine, then stumbled across the cajun stage on our way out to listen to a couple of tracks by lil Nathan and his zydecco band. Brilliant.
The party continued back at the restaurant at the Pontchartrain RV park we had amazing meals. Pete had a pound of grilled shrimp and Becs had a half rack of ribs, both making use of the incredible choice of bbq sauces. The best was called 'gators breath' which was sweet to start with and hot to finish- the waiter read them out like a wine list -BBQ heaven.
Day 37.
Heavy rain again in the morning so we did a bit of sorting out and laundry whilst checking out the playground. We were allowed to leave the RV parked up for the day, so got a taxi into the French Quarter.
After a little walk around we had lunch near the waterfront. Pete had the best shrimp po'boy ever and becs had half a dozen oysters and some fresh gumbo. We found a small tour operator called Frank, a really lovely and informative bloke. He walked us around and told us the amazing history of New Orleans and pointed out things of interest and different architectural styles.
It appears that N.O had previously been under French, Spanish and Dutch control and had then defended itself as American against British advances with the help of pirates. There is still the feel of a city full of scoundrels and eccentrics. It has real excitment and diversity, in fact during the tour we passed one of the locals, affectionately known as the naked transvestite cowboy. Sol slept the whole time and dylan was really well behaved so we had a visit to a coffee shop and celebratory cake afterwards.
We popped into the Voodoo museum, a mixture of african mysticism and Catholicism. Really interesting and full of misperception to the outsider. Voodoo dolls were in fact medical notes where the healer would remind themselves which bit had been treated by sticking a pin in. How useful for the more complex patient becs thought. We hit Bourbon street just as things wereheating up on a Friday night. Dylan insisted that he and sol both shook hands with a giant handgrenade outside the bar where they had been first invented. It all looked slightly inappropriate. We watched some incredible street performers, including a guy who slid about 8ft on the top of his head.
For dinner we pushed the boat out and went to an amazing club based on a British gentleman's club. Becs had fillet steak and a martini, and pete had a shrimp caesar. Dylan went for pasta and did us proud again. When we got back to the RV park Pete drove off into the night, sad to be leaving New Orleans behind us. We arrived in Baton Rouge late.
Day 38.
We were ready and waiting for the pool and hot tub to open in the morning. It was a lovely pool but the water was cold so Pete and dylan weren't in for long and Becs stuck to the hot tub. We headed off to find the baseball game, Louisiana State University (LSU) Tigers, versus Florida Gators. It had sold out of seats and we had n't fancied standing room, but decided to go along anyway and try our luck.
Managed to park the RV and then walked along a railway line with a few others towards the stadium just after the game had started. The lovely lady at the gate let us in for free and found us some cracking seats. It turned out to be an epic game and all the locals took pleasure in us being there to witness a score line not seen before and enjoyed explaining all the tactics to us. Sorry about having to take photos from the camera viewing screen on the tablet to include! Keep forgetting to use the right media!
Dylan got fully kitted out in LSU baseball cap, foam claw hand and tiger tail. It was hot but in true USA style they had thought of everything and got a covered playground inside the playground for the children once they were getting bored of the action. The ball nearly hit us several times. Afterwards we decided to backtrack further into Louisiana to visit the Crawfish festival in Breaux Bridge. It took a couple of hours to get there and then another couple of hours were spent firstly trying to park, then giving up as the festival looked rubbish, and then finally getting chucked out of our RV park and spending the night in a tourist information centre car park- not a brilliant end to an otherwise lovely day!!
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