At The Columns

Well I finally did it went to New Orleans this weekend, or should I say last weekend as it was a couple of days ago. We went Saturday, there were four of us Me, Mike, Chris and Jay, Mikes from Middlesbrough, Chris and Jay are both Americans and sort of showed us round the city a bit.
When you drive into the city you can still see lots of devastation and construction still going on trying to get things back to normal after the hurricane.
Drove past the super dome where all the people were trapped a couple of years ago, didn’t get a photo of it though as you cant stop and was passed it before I even thought of asking someone else to take one.
Going into New Orleans we travelled through a couple of really rough areas, good job it was daylight, think going through at night would have been a bit different, defiantly no stopping at traffic lights and keeping the doors locked.
Before we went to the French quarter stopped at a hotel called the Column’s on of the oldest hotels around apparently it use to be a tobacco plantation house. http://www.thecolumns.com/ We had what they call a Mint Julep there, apparently it’s what Southerners used to drink and sort of rivals a gin and tonic as we know it, cant say I was that impressed Bourbon and mint not really my thing, but there you go.

The two photos above show the outside of the Columns hotel and just looking up the street. The one below is of us all sitting at the bar, Mike the guy from Middlesborough is the one at the front he's only 25 fits right between Ben and Joe my eldest and youngest. The one on the right is yours truly on the way out of the hotel after the Mint Julep.

After leaving the Column’s headed for the French quarter as it was starting to get a little dark, wanted to get some photos before it was real dark.

These photos are after we parked and were our first view of Bourbon Street

First thoughts were that it was not very crowded and was not unlike a lot of main streets in the UK, if fact New Orleans is the closest to a European city i have seen since i have been here, at least in the French Quarter, but guess it would be with a name that had French in it.

Am going to post this part of the blog now as i have quite a few more photos to add and it will probably be too big and am getting fed up of adding photos right now.