In the afternoon we made it to downtown New Orleans. We
LOVED the vibe of the city, the jazz music coming out of random bars and cafes
and the colorful houses. We went on a cemetery tour and found out all sorts of
neat facts and history. We saw the Voodoo
queens grave- there was something about writing 3 X’s on her tomb and making a wish…. we could only do one each for a picture.
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| The guys behind us are locking up the doors to the cool downtown cemetery. I forgot to mention that we also saw Nicholas Cage's future tomb, it looks like a pyramid. Kinda creepy of him. |
For dinner we got gumbo and some amazing shrimp. We sat outside in the sun, listening to Jazz
music and eating Cajun food. It was everything I had hoped for from New
Orleans.
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| I like this one because you can see the city be hind us :-) |
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| It is November and we are sitting outside. So Happy. |
After dinner we walked around by the water front and a guy
came up to Jon and asked if he could shine his shoes. Jon’s shoes were brand new and for sure did
not need shining. The guy said they should make a bet and if he could guess
where he got his shoes and what state they were in that he could shine
them. We were pretty sure that the guy
was not going to guess where they came from and w e would be on our way. But
this guy was tricky. He said something like “You got your shoes on your feet in
New Orleans, and yous in standing in Louisiana.” And then he starting shining
the already white edges of Jon’s new shoes and demanded $20. In the end Jon gave him $5, a fair price for a
funny memory.
Unless all the shoe shiners in New Orleans are using that trick, Matt and I ran into that SAME guy when we were there a few years ago. He pulled the same thing on Matt except that it was, like, 4 AM and Matt didn't have any cash on him and the guy got mad. It was a little scary. :/ But New Orleans! I love it so much! I'm glad you're having a great time.
ReplyDeleteThat is SO funny!! Most important about your experience... why on earth were you out and about at 4am? Yous guys is CRAZY!
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ReplyDeleteHey story time...
ReplyDeleteI'm tired and hungry walking down a dark street toward my hotel in Shanghai. I had ducked out early from a meeting with other business school students. A tiny Chinese runs up to me, "shoe shy, shoe shy!" I try to ignore him and just focus my sight straight ahead but he grabs me by the arm and blurts out again, "shoe shy, rye now!" I'm jolted by his aggressive tactic and I sternly say NO and keep walking quickly. This punk whips out a squirt bottle and douses my left shoe with some brown gunk! I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at the gunk that now covered my brand new business oxfords and demand that he wipes it up. He chuckles, proud that he just forced someone into hiring him and has me set my foot on his small wooden box. He says that a shine costs $15 USD. As soon as he wipes the gunk away with the cloth I pull my foot away and start to walk away from him. Now he's furious. "You no PAY! You no PAY!" He grabs me by the arm again and I whip around and smack his shoulder, which spins him like a top. I shouldn't have been surprised that it was so easy to knock a this little man off his balance. I hustle away while he's still screaming at me in Chinese and I'm baffled that he thought I would actually pay him to clean crud off my shoe that he put there in the first place.
However, I might still be a wanted man in China.
Apparently, Jeremy has already read this post. Now he might not take me to New Orleans because there are shoe shine bums there like in China. Ah well... I guess I can listen to jazz music on pandora, but it just won't be the same. sigh.
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