New Orleans 2

There are kids grooving along to the music everywhere, and a complete lack of the racial tension we felt in Memphis (I'm not naïve enough to say it isn't there - just that we never felt it).  Then there's the shops, tons and tons of little interesting places, an infinite amount of stuff.  I should emphasise that I’m not talking about tourist tat here.  Although I must admit that there is a fair amount of tourist rubbish around, in the usual form of posters, tea-towels and “genuine” Cajun hot sauce.  Still, I enjoyed looking at all the different sauces, which all had fun names, even if they all pretty much stuck to the same basic theme.  They included:

Rectal Rocket Fuel
Anal Agony
Ass in a Bucket of Water 
Blazing Blow-Job   
Flaming Fart
Holy Crap!
- and my own personal favourite -
Hunka Hunka Burnin' Butt

Tourist shopping opportunities aside, if you bypass all those you'll just find the most fascinating little places.  Shops with endless nooks crammed with items that you've either never seen before or haven't seen in years.  New Orleans IS history.  It's like everything from the past seems to get sucked down there, to be preserved forever in the mud.

Sorry.  I'm getting overwrought.  But New Orleand has that effect on you.  It's just an endlessly fascinating place.  Caro and I took all afternoon to walk just one block on our first day in the French Quarter.  This is because of all the things going on, and all the stuff we wanted to look at.  We spent an hour looking at all the buildings on one street, because they are like nothing you have ever seen before.  Constructed in the Spanish style, they were built from bricks the slaves made from a mixture of Spanish moss, horsehair, mud and molasses.  They all feature balconies which overflow with plants and flowers dangling down and iron lacework hanging underneath like fossilised spiderwebs.  Flags fly, shop fronts feature those kooky old wooden signs, music blares out and there's this smell everywhere generated by food, heat, body odour, illegal substances and something vaguely musty that reminds you of your trainers after 3rd year P.E.
 
On our first day in the French Quarter we ducked into a vintage memorabilia shop, which itself took a good hour to look around.  We weren't about to buy anything.  If we had done that the budget would have been blown and we would have had to return on the next flight.  I was sorely tempted though – this shop was like a fascinating museum standing there on the corner.  Amongst the stock was a pair of Muhammed Ali's shorts valued at $1500, Bugsy Siegel's autograph on a playing card (the ace of diamonds) for $4500, dozens of dollar bills signed by everyone from Frank Sinatra to The Blues Brothers and a copy of the Royal Wedding programme signed by Charles and Di which was worth over $5000.  The guy behind the counter tried to interest us in this because I am English and therefore love Her Majesty.  I get this quite a lot.  Americans often try to strike up a conversation by saying "Say, how about that Camilla?" like they would ask about the fortunes of a football team, or "So, how's the Queen?" as if I may reply that I bumped into her the other day at Tescos and she was looking a bit peaky.
 
To keep the shopkeeper happy, Caro and I had oooh-ed at the wedding programme, but eventually managed to steer the conversation back to the Rat Pack and he promptly produced a Dean Martin album signed by the old sot for $375.  I'm sure it was, as he said, "an investment" but we took the opportunity to scarper when some woman asked him about Jim Morrison.
 
So many of the shops were like this.  Caro found a marvellous old book shop that we rummaged around for hours, finding interesting old prints and musty books.  Caro found a marvellous old anthropological study on “New Zealand and The Maori” full of wonderful ink drawings, and I was delighted to find that the shop had a "Criminality and Rascality" section.  Fabulous.  
 
In all of these shops people behind counters were eager to show us stuff, not so much to make a sale, but as an excuse to chat, ignore the other customers, find out what we were up to and all that.  We found the people of New Orleans to be very proud of their city and delighted that we’d found our way there.  It was definitely the friendliest city we'd yet visited.  On more than one occasion, locals came up to us just to offer advice, directions and-  
 
CRACK!!!  BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
 
What the HELL was THAT???!!  And who turned on the BLOODY taps!!???
 
Yes, New Orleans is subject to frequent, violent thunderstorms that caught the two of us off-guard on a couple of occasions.  We’d be walking along in bright, blazing sunshine, duck into a shop for a couple of minutes then step back out again to find Noah floating by on his ark, and thunder rocking the French Quarter like cannonfire.  It seemed strange to this English boy, for whom rain is something that comes on only gradually (but then lasts for WEEKS) but it all added to the thick, muggy atmosphere of the place.  Fortunately for us, Caro had bought a brolly in Memphis after she was caught in an unexpected downpour on the way to Graceland and was desperately trying to avoid a Hair Situation.  So the brolly went up and down like a whore's drawers the entire time we spent in New Orleans.  I didn't really mind the rain anyway - it was so hot in the city that I knew I would be dry (but very sticky) about 10 minutes after the rain stopped.