March 17-18, 2016

The plan of leaving Asheville at 1 or 2 did not happen at all. Corey slept at midnight and soon later in a half conscious state, kept muttering in his sleep about needing to close the doors. He was in the middle of having a nightmare and clearly paranoid. Then I totally got creeped out that he was having some premonition about a murderer about to break in and got up to lock both doors leading to our bedroom. Right after that, he was sound asleep cuddling Duke while I was still on alert for some murderer about to knock on our door. We slept through our 1AM alarm, then the 2AM, then the 5AM. And then just decided to wake up whenever we felt like it…

One of the beauties of this road trip is how flexible and laid back everything has been. We ended up sleeping until 8 and started our drive at 9am. Definitely not what we had planned at all, but it was totally fine.

Corey drove the first 3 hours through some really scenic mountain views. I drove 5.5 hours through Atlanta and a lot of nothingness. And then by the time Corey took over, we had less than 2 hours left and started getting psyched.

To be completely honest, when we first arrived my initial impression of where we were staying was “OMG. It looks more ghetto than Lowell. I hope my car doesn’t get broken into.” Needless to say, this was a constant fear I had in Lowell. NOLA looked just like Beyonce’s Formation video. Kinda cool, but kinda unsettling at the same time.

As soon as I walked into the AirBnb that we rented, I felt at ease. The place was stunningly beautiful and the hosts were some incredibly interesting people. Octavio is a private chef who worked his ass off to train in France and the other host, Cameron, is an established musician who was about to play that night.They gave us a quick tour of the house. We (including Duke) got settled in pretty quickly. Due to being completely exhausted, we decided on takeout instead of dining in at a restaurant. We chose to order some Vietnamese food from a place called MoPho because our host was raving about how amazing their chef is. While we waited for food, Corey chatted with Octavio and I took a nap. I know for a fact that Corey has a lot to say their conversation so I’ll start linking his blog posts to mine when he’s done writing. I wish I could describe the feeling of waking up from a deep nap and taking a bite of MoPho’s fried shrimp spring rolls… just WOW…. ughhh and now I want more…

Day 2
We woke up today and took things at a very chill pace again. I actually slept in til 11AM. =)
We had a ton of recommendations on what to do and what to eat. Our plan was to drive to the French Quarter and try a little bit of everything. As we were getting closer, we realized that it was St. Patrick’s Day and people were celebrating already. I don’t know how busy it normally is, but there were huge crowds and lines everywhere including at Café Du Monde… Because we weren’t in the mood to wait and were starving for some breakfast, we decided on skipping out on the opportunity to try some beignets. On the bright side, we ended up walking to French Market to try Meals from the Heart Café, another place that I had my eyes on. While Corey got the food, Duke and I walked around some shops and found some nice shade in a little park. It was the perfect spot to escape the heat and enjoy our meals.

We made our way around the French Quarter checking out some shops and just admiring the culture shock.

Got some gelato/affogato and then decided to head out to move on to our next spot. We went to Big Fisherman Seafood and picked up two pounds of crawfish. Luckily Walgreens was right next door, so we also loaded up on snacks and water for tomorrow’s drive.

 

We were debating on whether to check out Audubon Park or City Park next, but due to recommendations of City Park for Duke, that’s what we decided on. It probably wasn’t as scenic or romantic as Audubon but I’m glad that that was our decision. Their dog park is beyond what I could’ve ever imagined. The place was HUGE with tennis balls everywhere! There were doggy pools, different terrains, and tons of water bowls. The best part, all of the dogs were extremely well behaved and I didn’t see any droppings left on the ground. Cambridge owners may talk about fancy homemade doggy diets, personal dog walkers, and high end vets, but their parks are always full of crap!!! And then there are the people who actually do pick up after their dogs, but leave a pile of used bags filled with poop next the park entrance instead of walking to trash barrel! So irritating! It was so refreshing to see such beautiful area devoted to dogs and humans who actually appreciated enough to maintain it! Anyways… it was awesome.

NOLA:
So much culture!
Music is HUGE
Restaurants closed by 7pm so people can go out at night instead
Much more laid back than Boston
Surprised to learn that tourism decreases in the summer due to heat
French quarter is a whole different world
Drinking in public

Would return to:
Try authentic Creole food
Cafe Du Monde
Luizza’s
Frenchmen St
soooo much more