Dixieland II: New Orleans

I had been warned by my family, who lived in New Orleans before Katrina, that the place still looked like a battlezone. We weren't very far into our journey from Mobile when I saw it for myself: the broken trees along I-10 that had yet to be cleared preceded neighborhood upon neighborhood of abandoned houses. If you weren't looking for it, you might not have even noticed the broken-in roofs and windows, the FEMA trailers still sitting in front of some homes. Writing this in retrospect, the German word for uncanny or eery comes to mind: unheimlich.

The unheimlich should have quashed our revelry, but we were not to be kept down. I hadn't seen my cousin in years, and we took full advantage of the entertainment on offer in the Big Easy. Rockstars that we are, we dove right into the debauchery to be had at the New Orleans Aquarium. I've never been a huge fan of seeing animals in small enclosures, but New Orleans has done it right, even after losing most of its animals and facilities during Katrina. I could have sat in front of the shark tank for hours...it was fascinating just to watch them move. Interesting story: before the hurricane came, the aquarium took its dolphins to areas they thought would be out of reach of the storm, housing them in private swimming pools. Well, the floods reached the pools, and the dolphins were washed out to sea. However, when rescue crews were searching the area for survivors, they found the dolphins -- all of them -- together. The dolphins had found each other and stayed together until they were rescued. It might be cheesy, but I think it's a beautiful story to come out of the tragedy that was Katrina.

As you might have already guessed, we did turn into rockstars for the rest of our stay. We were there the weekend after Mardi Gras, so beads were still hanging in all of the trees and from all of the balconies. Not to be outdone by the Mardi Gras crowd, however, my cousin and I could be found shouting -- I don't think you could call it singing -- War Eagle outside of our hotel at who knows what hour of the morning just before we were approached by a man asking for our help. This man proceeded to tell us about his gang life -- all of the people he had killed, all of the others he had beaten up, and more troublingly, those who still had it coming. My cousin, being the good Samaritan -- and brave being -- that he is, ended up taking him down the street and treating him to food and a beer. I went to sleep instead.

To protect the innocent, the rest of the details of our trip will remain undisclosed, but you can check out the photos at the top!

tags: travel  neworleans  katrina