The first day was a long, long day

Day 1: October 2, 1999.

The day started with a long drive. We drove 450 miles from 3:15am until around noon. We finally knew we would make it when we found the Louisiana welcome center.

We got to New Orleans by way of a six mile bridge, which Craig hated immensely! Just as we finished that bridge, we got lost. Our directions to the Days Inn indicated that we should go across the "Gno". Well, not knowing at the time that the "Gno" is the absolutely improper abbreviation for Greater New Orleans, we headed down 10 to the Superdome and tried to find our way across the Mississippi. We got lost trying to get on the elevated road that leads to the Miss River Bridge, and, when we had finally gotten over (yet another bridge for Craig to live through), I took the first exit to see if we could get a picture of the river. Lost again, in a fairly bad section of town. We finally got back on the elevated road and headed through Harvey and ended up lost over in Westwego. The Huey P. Long bridge was coming up, so we headed back the way we came.

Sooner or later, we saw a sign that told us to keep going back on the Westbank Expressway to the Baritaria exit to get to the Days Inn. After doing that, we found that we had actually passed over our motel long ago (it is actually only a mile or two from the Miss River Bridge), but on the elevated road, we never saw the sign. We checked into room 124, only to find that the air conditioner blew out hot air. So we swapped to room 120 for the night. The air conditioner didn't feel cold, but at least it wasn't only a heater.

Well, we still had time to get our adventure underway, so we looked through a few pamphlets we had picked up at the welcome center and decided that the French Quarter would be our first stop, and we called to reserve a spot in a walking voodoo tour for later in the night.

We headed back into New Orleans. We got lost again a tiny bit, but finally found the way down through the French Quarter. We parked the car and started to walk around. The concept of a "streetcar named desire" comes from New Orleans, so imagine our surprise when I caught the "bus named desire" heading down the street. Actually, I assume that the bus was headed to meet up with the Streetcar-Desire line, but it was good enough for us.

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