Life’s a holiday

Somehow I still find myself out on the road, and increasingly less motivated to update this thing in favour of doing stuff… or taking a break from doing stuff and trying to find some time to do nothing. So if I’m not doing stuff then I’m doing nothing. Capiche?

Leaving Gainesville became somewhat of a mission, resulting in having to wait for a Greyhound by myself for a bus that didn’t arrive till 9:30pm. Hours whittled away at the bus station, laughing with the guitarist from Fake Problems at the drunk guy who couldn’t buy a bus ticket (the office was closed) so spent about an hour trying to convince a taxi driver, or any random car for that matter, to take him to Tampa. A good 2 hours away.

New Orleans was a little less eventful this time around, no hazy all nighters or crazy German guys, but I did manage to see a couple things I somehow missed the first time around. Like the first thing pretty much any visitor to NO will go see: The French Quarter. In my defence, I didn’t realise there was much more beyond 2 or 3 blocks past Bourbon St (admittedly and expectedly one of the lamer parts of New Orleans). The place turned out to be pretty rad, with all the old buildings and livelihood I expected the first time around from all the pictures and travel shows I’ve seen documenting the city.

Statue of Andrew Jackson

Some kind of Disney-esque palace. Not really.

Moonwalk something something.

Something about a steamer. If this was earlier in the trip, I probably would have posed squatting next to the sign. Apparently I have recovered some sliver of shame left.

Laura (friend of a friend who was at The Fest) was also in town so we hung out for a bit and she showed me the super rad Cafe Du Monde. It’s famous for some reason I don’t particularly care to know, but they made rad Beignets (“bane-yays”) and somewhat sub-standard coffee with chickory, apparently this is some kind of New Orleans style of coffee.

Also had the chance to checkout the cemeteries, which I missed last time too. A lot of the guides recommend these, mainly because they’re unusual in the fact that with New Orleans sitting in such low terrain graves had to be built above ground. In actuality they were kind of cool to glance at for a couple minutes, but beyond that it seemed little different to any other cemetery. Maybe there are a few famous dead guys in there. We ended up going to the pub across the road instead which turned out to be a much better idea, but I still squeezed in a few kinda cool shots:

Evidently, New Orleans has somewhat of a zombie problem.

And a couple of night shots.

Cafe Du Monde with a jazz band playing out on the street

Paddle steamer on the Mississippi

From there I headed further west again to Austin, TX. Love that city so much. The place, the people, everything. You should go. And when you do, please take me.

Spent the weekend with my pals from last visit, Emma and Jessie, at Fun Fun Fun Fest:

It truly was fun!

Bull riding

There really isn’t much else to post, the only photos I really took were of bands so I won’t bother with those, except for GWAR. Pretty amazing costumes and a great theatrical set. Thinking of seeing them again in a few weeks when they’re in Vancouver.

For some reason Bees in Austin like me. Or more specifically, my drinks. Little bastards. I punched one to teach him a lesson.

Not this one. He was one of the lucky ones.

Post-Austin I returned to Seattle and hung out for a couple nights. Beautiful Seattle weather when I first arrived:

In an effort to escape the rain I headed underground. Everything’s happy underground. And dry. So I went on the Seattle Underground Tour which sounded pretty badass, like some kind of lost city. It was sure to be awesome, something like the lost city of Atlantis, but with the ghosts of Cobain, Hendrix and Layne Staley all jamming and smoking bongs instead of mermaids and sunken treasure. Reality was a little different.

Fortunately the next day was a little nicer so I had a bit more chance to explore. Number one priority was to head down to Fremont, a little urban hippie type area.

This guy is called the Fremont Troll. He lives under the enormous Aurora Bridge, and that is a real VW Beetle.

This was once a real rocket. Nowadays, it is one big pile of gimmickery. I thought it was photo worthy.

Also, a lot of people seem to be surprised by this next landmark in Fremont. Personally I’m not sure why, I always thought a 10 foot tall statue of a communist leader (Lenin) would just scream “SEATTLE!” but some people don’t seem to think so.

View of Seattle from Gasworks Park

The less-cool sign at Pike St Markets

And finally, the place that turned terrible coffee into a worldwide phenomenon. CURSE YOU STARBUCKS!!

Born On The Bayou

Creedence Clearwater Revival has been spinning round in my head whilst in New Orleans, particularly on my first day when I went on a swamp tour and went through the bayous of southern “Loeze-yanna”… Bayou, for those of you who don’t know, is the 4th word in the title of the first track of Creedence’s Bayou Country, which as you can see, also has ‘Bayou’ in it’s title. Oh yeh, it’s also a meandering river. Or at least that’s the gist I got from the tour guide, but with the sweet sounds of John Fogerty singing “doot doot doot looking out my back door” swirling around my head, I’m sure you can understand why I may have found it hard to pay attention.

One thing I learned on the tour --> Boars eat marshmallows

...as do Alligators...

They also eat hotdogs. Poor gator smacked her head on the boat after this.

Ol' Swampy

The swamp tour was a little exxy, and after seeing tons of wild boar, alligators and turtles in the first 20 mins, the following hour and a half became somewhat tedious. I am pretty glad I went though, the bus trip out there and back was worth it alone. The bus driver ended up giving us a good little tour of New Orleans itself, telling us some history and taking us through some of the hardest hit areas from Katrina back in 2005. The place has bounced back quite well, but there’s still a ton of residences and businesses that are still boarded up.

I’ve done the touristy stuff, as mentioned there was the swamp tour, I saw the French Quarter, went for a quick cruise down the “Missippi” to some shithole town on the other side (and promptly jumped back on board to head back) bought a hand grenade in Bourbon St and tore the place apart (chill, it’s just a ridiculously overpriced drink for tourists. It has to be done. It was done.), and saw some jazz bands doing their thing down Frenchman St.

Cool paddle steamer. I was on the piece of junk passenger ferry with the red floor in the foreground

Bourbon St

Looking down Bourbon St

I’ve also gotta point out the extremely thick accent and “Nawlins” pronunciation seems to be a complete lie. There’s a definite twang, but there’s also a definite “new” when they say New Orleans. MYTH BUSTED.