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New Orleans, LA

We met Nick Callais on the Intrepid tour in Vietnam. Over many 20c beers that week, he suggested we visit him while in New Orleans. Eight months later, we were in Nick’s home town watching a live NBA game with him. This was just one of the many awesome experiences and opportunities Nick gave us during our two day trip to New Orleans. Inside the NBA stadium, we all stood, the lights dimmed. In-training soldiers stood next to the basketball players and they, along with the stadium, sung the American national anthem. Regardless of whether it’s your country’s national anthem or not, standing with hand on heart along side a few thousand people was extremely moving. New Orleans’s Pelicans (former Charlotte Hornets) against the Chicago Bulls played an action packed game. 88-79 to the home team. An entertaining game, but just the start of our night out in New Orleans.

Am I getting old or was Bourbon Street too wild for me? New Orleans is the perfect cocktail for a great night out. A mixture filled to the brim with a hint of wild Las Vegas, a splash of of NYC culture and L.A style muddled in with it’s own southern cajun Spice. Whatever it was, I just wasn’t prepared for it. It was our first big outing since Dublin and sadly it only took TWO drinks before I asked the boys to deliver me home so they could stay out until 5am. In my defence, those two drinks tasted like juicy daiquiris. They were called Hand Grenades, had a strong kick and were served in large plastic grenade shaped vessels! Similar to Vegas, walking around with a drink of choice is legal on Bourbon Street. This concept made for an economical night out. I loved the ability to pay for a refill or walk into bars and enjoy the music without having to pay for a new drink each time. The takeaway drinks were from daiquiri bars, like in Vegas. In Bourbon Street, they expanded on that concept and added a one stop shop for other things like pizza or burgers or randomly, cigars. For the half of the night that I was out, I experienced nightlife like nowhere else. Im sure the boys experienced more in those following hours, but we can only guess! The street was jam packed with live jazz, folk like ‘Dan Dan The Shoeshine Man’ and the odd religious preacher with a 10ft cross. Of course, they were widely ignored but accepted, as were those dancing in the street. Some clubs had ladies dancing on platforms outside, some had Vegas style neon lighting and some jazz clubs were dark and dingy. Bourbon Street exceeded all expectations!

So you probably know, we aren’t the biggest ‘traditional museum’ fans, but when Nick said he was taking us to the National World War 2 museum, this intrigued us. Travelling has provided us with a better global perspective of war, including the impacts war has on a country, it’s people as well as freedom and hardships for present and future generations. Our visit to the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia, the Vietnam War Museum in Saigon and the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Poland has given us empathy for those who have sacrificed their lives for world peace and of the innocent lives lost to war. Visiting the National World War 2 Museum was the missing piece. America plays, and has played a huge part in wars, so it was important to visit a museum that explained ‘war’ from their perspective. This visit filled in the gaps and opened our eyes to the scale of a war that killed 65,000,000 people across the world. That figure is incomprehensible. Nick’s friend got us tickets to an amazing 4d WW2 movie directed and narrated by Tom Hanks and to an interactive experience inside a submarine while at war. Inside the sub, we were given a crew position then looked through the binoculars and went to war. It was a scary feeling being so involved. I’m not ‘for war’ by any means, but I do appreciate the fact that we live in a country free from war because of those that have sacrificed their lives. So many countries we have visited are not as fortunate.

You haven’t seen a country’s passion for a sport until you’ve experienced American Super Bowl. I guess the only difference to footy or the horse races in Aussie, cricket or soccer in England or rugby or sailing in NZ, is the impact Super Bowl has to a nation with over 320million people. Every year, this huge country pauses for three hours to watch a game that stops a nation. Nine out of ten Super Bowl fans prefer to stay put in their very own homes with the rest venturing out to friend’s houses, bars or restaurants. According to ‘Google’, there are more folks who’d rather miss a major life event like the birth of a child, funeral of a loved one, important work function, or the wedding of a close relative or friend than to miss the Super Bowl. We experienced this patriotism and energy in a bar with Nick and his friend Will. Of course the game got the crowd’s attention but so did the adverts and the halftime show. This year’s game was one sided, so unless you were a Seattle Seahawks’s fan, then the highlight was Bruno Mars’s epic halftime performance. In this bar, people applauded and cheered, as they did to some of the adverts. In the days following, these Super Bowl ads, costing $133,333.33 per second or $4 million per 30-seconds, are highly analysed. The Coke ad caused the most controversy. The American National Anthem was sung in dozens of different languages causing many debates about multiculturalism. All three Doritos ads were highly rated. I bet that was a relief with a $12m outlay – hopefully they were offered a ‘buy 2 get one free’ offer! My favourites included the Bud Light and Budweiser commercials. The latter welcomed home a soldier, representing all soldiers coming home from war. Americans sure know how to entertain, pull record audiences for a football game and even make a television advert worthy of not changing the channel.

“Random Super Bowl XLVIII statistics #22: An estimated 50 million cases of beer, 1.25 billion chicken wings and 11 million slices of Domino’s pizza will be consumed during the game.”

New Orleeens, New OrLins, Nawlins. New Orleans has 9 dialects. It is said that the New Orleans’s dialects are so diverse that each accent can identify a racial or ethnic neighbourhood the person is from. The Cajun ethnic group (French-speakers from Acadiain) are a significant portion of south Louisiana’s population. Cajun’s have exerted an enormous impact on the state’s culture, particularly in the architecture and food. Two day’s ago I’d never heard of jambalaya, gumbo, red beans with rice and po-boys, but down here it’s common terminology for delicious food. Thank’s to Nick, this is just one of the many experiences he gave us. It is always great to get a local’s perspective. Nick in particular, is a wealth of knowledge and is a super intelligent friendly guy who has done New Orleans and America proud. We were taken to key spots around the city by foot in his fabulous Mercedes. To name a few, Jackson Square, Moon Walk on the Mississippi River, the lake, City Park, several affluent neighbourhoods and we even drove by a few fraternities parties. Fraternities actually exist by the way, not just in the movies. Some require a semester long acceptance/inauguration process for the 1/3 of students who participate. Nick hosted us in one of the city’s fanciest of hotels, perfectly located in the heart of the French Quarter. In only two days he managed to squeeze in a night out on Bourbon Street, the WW2 museum, a live NBA game and to watch Super Bowl like a local.

If you had imagined New Orleans to be the city of music, that’s exactly what it is. Street performers with saxophones to full blown jazz clubs. Whether it’s a night out on Bourbon Street or an afternoon stroll around Jackson Square, the place literally rocks with soulful sounds filling the air. This city has a worldly mix of culture, food and music, with influences from Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. New Orleans is one of the world’s most fascinating cities. Yet again, another American welcomed us into their lives. Our experiences in New Orleans wouldn’t have been the same without you Nick. Thank y
ou for everything.

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