Nawleans

So I think the New Orleans fog has finally lifted from my mind grapes. That city is exhausting! Because it makes you drink! A LOT! How can you say no to a 3 for 1? Four times?

I got there at 8:30am on Wednesday, because I left here at 5:30am, because I got up at 3am. I was on a flight by myself and everyone else arrived hours later. It was too early to check into my hotel room, so I went to the convention center and helped the guys set up the booth and, like, zombie-stacked shit on tables for a couple hours while dying inside. After my roommate showed up and we checked into our hotel room, we met up with our other coworker, the photographer, and the three of us hung out for the rest of the day. He had been there a few times before, so he was our tour guide. We had lunch in the French Quarter and I ate alligator, gumbo, and started my day of drinking with a hurricane. We walked around the city taking pictures, stopped in a few bars, took our beers with us, BECAUSE YOU CAN DO THAT, and ended up at the cemetery where Madame Laveau is buried. But it was closed, so we couldn't get in. My coworkers hoisted me up on the wall/cupped my ass to get some pictures, and I climbed up on another wall where there was a missing brick for a foot hole. I wish we had been able to go in.

We left the cemetery and were walking around on Bourbon Street, trying to find a good place to duck into, when we came upon the red light part of town and my female coworker pulled us into a classy strip club called Lipstixx that showed the girls' silhouettes in the window. This was at around 5:30pm. I was like, "Oh god, oh god." We sat at a table far enough away from the stage, and five minutes later we were joined by this totally wasted stripper who also had fangs. She was a hot mess. She explained her fangs—that some nice gentleman had them custom made for her—and she popped them out and, I can't remember if she was missing teeth, but I'm just gonna go ahead and assume she was. Then when it was her turn to "dance," she was totally stumbling around and hitting her head on the pole, and when she reached behind her to remove her top, and her eye lids were at half mast and it was taking her a good two minutes to unhook herself, we were like, "We gotta get out of here."

The rest of the night is a little hazy, but I know we ate dinner at Acme Oyster House—waited in a long line, and sat at the bar. I had a dozen oysters and I don't even like oysters. But you're in New Orleans, so just do it. At one point my coworker and I bought feather masks and wore them to the final bar of the night, where the rest of our group was. That was a good day. The next day, when I had to work all day, was not such a good day.

I felt exhausted and foggy for the rest of the trip. New Orleans is an exhausting city, but you leave feeling like you've gotten an adventureful. It's at once crazy and beautiful and rough and intriguing—and sated, with culture and stories and good interesting foods, but mostly with booze. I would go back.