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02/20/2006: "Trip to new Orleans"

It wasn't a pleasant experience - select the "more" link to read the whole story. Here are my pictures.

The hotel room was a drama-laden adveture that consumed about three hours of my time over the weekend. Eventually, after going to the Wyndham Bourbon Orleans hotel and being lied to by Jeanette at the front desk, and then being lied to by a reservation agent at the Wyndham corporate reservation center, and then being lied to by Linda Bastion at the Bourbon Orleans, and being lied to by Lois, the Wyndham coporate customer service representative, I finally got the manager of the Bourbon Orleans, Mr. Bonns, to resolve the issue.

The good news was that the hotel they moved me to was much better than the Bourbon Orleans - the Royal Sonesta seemed to be completely normal. The Bourbon Orleans only had maid service 3 days a week. Interestingly, both hotels are charging $30 a night for parking, while the city's lots a block away are only $10.

Sadly, the parking issue was both good and bad. On Friday night, I parked Steve's car on Conti street a block from Rampart. When we went to drive to the volleyball tournament on Saturday morning, someone had used a key to scratch the word "Jerry" on the hood of Steve's car. In the 13 years we've been going to New Orleans and parked our car on the street, we've never had any damage at all, nor have we ever heard of anyone have any problem.

On Saturday, (after the tournament 3:30 PM), we parked in a garage on Rampart (we were cheated out of $5, but we didn't feel like fighting it). As we were walking the four blocks back to Bourbon, we ran across four pairs of young, black men - wearing do-rags or caps, talking on their cell phones, and forcing us off the sidewalk. In all our trips to N.O., I've never been afraid to walk down a block in the French Quarter. This time, I was petrified. The groups of young black men everywhere, including on Bourbon Street, was very frightning.

There were police cars everywhere in the French Quarter, but not visible anywhere on the trip to Tulane or at Tulane (here are my pictures). There were a large number of police and National Guardsmen on Bourbon Street, too. I'd guess there were twice as many officers as we see at Southern Decadence, although the crowd on Bourbon Street was about 10% of the people during Decadence.

Bourbon Street itself had a completely different feel, too. It was filthy - not just the normal filth that accumulates every day, but obviously three or four days worth of broken bottles, cheap beads, and plastic cups filled the gutters. Bourbon Street itself was not closed to traffic until 8 or 9 PM. Parts of it were not closed to traffic at all. There were cars parked along Bourbon Street, even when it was closed. The crowd was the usual mix of drunk college kids and Midwestern couples, but also included a huge number of middle-aged men who looked like contruction workers or building inspectors as well as a signficant number of Hispanic men (but not a single Hispanic female.)

On Saturday night we went to eat at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen near the French Market for the first time. There was no waiting, but all the tables wre full. They closed at 9:00 PM (I don't know whether that was normal). It was a great meal at a reasonable cost - their wine list was pretty good and inexpensive. The bad news was that as Steve and I walked the 20 blocks from our hotel, we were accosted by a huge number of street people begging for money. We noramlly get annoyed at street beggers, but we are never scared by them. These were "gangs" of young adults (both male and female) and we were frightened.

To sum it all up, Steve and I will not be going to Southern Decadence this year. We're not sure when we'll go back to New Orleans - even for the volleyball tournament. It's painfully obvious that New Orleans "charm" is gone - and will probably never return. What's left are thugs, drunks, trash, and high prices. We'll spend our vacation dollars somewhere else. (Here are my pictures.)

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