I didn't wake up hungover today! Thankfully, despite ending yesterday pretty drunk, we also ended it pretty early, and I was positively pinging when I woke up at 7 this morning. Thankfully more so, Stace also woke up feeling good from a lengthy sleep. I set the alarm a little earlier this morning because we wanted to organise our tours for tomorrow and research a little bit about today. While it wasn't purposeful when we booked our trip, we managed to come to New Orleans just in time for the first weekend of Jazz Fest, which is the city's second biggest festival behind Mardi Graz. We wanted to take advantage of that fact and go to Jazz Fest today. But before that, we needed to arrange both of tomorrow's activities. We were pretty keen to to a cemetery tour while we were here, as the cemeteries are apparently unique, and also a swamp your, as surely a visit to the deep South isn't complete without a visit to the swamps. I jumped online to Viator and booked the cemetery tour for the morning, and Stace called up the swamp tour because their online system was ****, and I don't like calling people. For more information on these tours, read tomorrow's blog. Whenever I get around to it. I also had to research Jazz Fest because I wasn't sure how to get there, and it wouldn't let me buy tickets online. There was a courtesy bus that was running, but to get on it you had to have a valid ticket, and without being able to purchase them online, the only way to get one was at the gate. But to get to the gate, we needed the transport. See what I'm getting at? It's like an endless spiral. After lots of reading and not getting too far, we'd almost resigned ourselves to the fact we weren't going to be able to go, but we thought it would be good to go down and check with the concierge at the hotel to see if we could get any further information. Who would've thought that concierges are helpful? Not me, as I'd never used one before, so lucky I had Stace with me (we pair up so well), who suggested we go there, and ultimately we got good information. The concierge confirmed that tickets can be purchased at the gate, and the hotel was running its own shuttle bus to the festival, and we didn't need the pre purchased ticket to ride, only $20 each. Yay! Once we'd finally established our plans, the time was already well past 10am, and with bus tickets in hand (or more accurately, around our wrists), we went out the front of the hotel and within 15 minutes, we were on our way to Jazz Fest. When we got close, the streets around us just transformed into basically street festivals, with people having parties in their front driveways, and heaps selling drinks, hats and practically anything. The line to get tickets wasn't as long as we expected, nor was the line to get in once we did have them, and by 11am, we were in! Jazz Fest is massive. It's held at the huge fairgrounds in New Orleans, with no fewer than 6 stages scattered around the site for music. People like Elton John and Bruce Springsteen had played here in the past, and later on this afternoon the Red Hot Chilli Peppers were headlining this year's festival. There's also a s***load of food and drink stands, serving up all kinds of southern food and, you guessed it, drinks (drinks primarily being beer), as well as a heap of arts, crafts and cultural exhibitions. It was a real coup that we just happened to be here at the same time as it. But Jazz Fest was also packed, and it was a very hot day. When we got there it wasn't too bad, and we quickly found some food (I had a cajun duck Po Boy) and drink. When I did order my beer, the first real accent confusion occurred when the girl asked for I.D and my age, but thought I'd said 'twenty none', and not 'twenty nine'. Either that or I mumbled, which is also highly possible, particularly if you ask Stace or my mum, who both think I mumble. I think they just don't listen to me, likely sick of my ******** waffling on. Which is fair enough. Just as quickly as finding food, we lathered on some sunscreen, but even then it was hot (as it would've been I guess - sunscreen just protects, it doesn't actually cool you down). We went through a few exhibitions and saw a couple of stages of acts, before settling on the grass for a half hour or so listening to one of the acts on one of the bigger stages. As the sun got hotter, we moved around more to find more shade and eat more food. If you haven't got it yet, we're being fat pigs in America. As the day got longer, yet more and more people crammed in to the fairgrounds, eager to see everybody, but more than likely most were coming for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. With about an hour before their set, we headed towards their stage. Even then, we couldn't even get close to seeing the stage, such was the sheer amount of people there, which I think pushed well over 100,000 from what we heard later on. We found a spot on the grass a bit further back, and passed the time away drinking beer and eating fried chicken. Oink oink I'm a fat little pig. Finally the Red Hot Chilli Peppers came on, to the absolute jubilation of the crowd. We couldn't see, but we listened for a while as they smashed out some hits, and were still entertained by the copious amount of drunks losing their **** at the awesomeness of the tunes. After about 45 minutes though, the thought of waiting hours for transport with 100,000 people trying to get out was starting to get on our mind, so we decided to make a tactical move and get going then. We couldn't see the stage anyway, so we headed off. It proved to be a good move too; in little over half an hour, we'd walked to our bus stop, got on our bus, negotiated the little traffic and been dropped off back at the hotel. Later on when I check Google Maps, the traffic jams around that area would've meant hardly moving a block in that time. So while people were stuck in that traffic, Stace and I had freshened up, and for the first time, were venturing down Bourbon Street. And wow, what a party it was there. Every single establishment seemed to be a pub or bar, and each of them had live music blaring. The energy was intense, and was second only to the intensity of drunks, which is saying something. It was only early evening after all. We strolled down the street looking for somewhere to eat, which wasn't that difficult, and eventually settled on a pub. There was no good reason for it, they all looked pretty much the same, but they were the lucky ones to have us this night. Yet again I ordered a burger, only this time it had nothing to do with wanting a burger, but more because I wanted to try alligator, and it just so happened that alligator was on the burger. It wasn't the best burger ever, but was still good, and it was all the more better with the couple of beers, which were so cold they had ice forming in them. Very refreshing. Oddly enough, the burger didn't cone with fries, but freshly made potato chips that were still warm. Stace had a club sandwich, which was so massive she only got a few bites in before she was full, and a cocktail. I decided I probably should share some of her food too, and not just mine, in case you were wondering. After dinner we walked the long way back to our hotel via Jackson Square, which wasn't even in the same direction as our hotel. We'll call it a romantic stroll. To get more food. Between Jackson Square and the Mississippi River, there is a famous cafe called Cafe Du Monde, which apparently translates into 'cafe of the world', and it serves apparently delicious French pastries, in particular beignets, which is what we were going for. We grabbed a small bag of them (ok there was 6), and took them up the stairs that overlook Jackson Square, where we sat in the moonlight (it was probably a street light) and ate them. And yep, they were good. But afterwards we were so full. Like penguins coming back from feeding in the ocean, very slowly we waddled back to our hotel for another early(ish) night, keen to rest up before another big day tomorrow. New Orleans was well and truly taking it out of us, but putting it back in as food.