So I messed up again...if you're reading this, make sure you've read the previous entry, which is the second one entitled 30 October...need to keep you on your toes, see?!

We woke up on the morning of Hallowe'en, still wondering quite why there had been a tank on the forecourt of the petrol station we'd found (see, made you want to read the previous entry, didn't I??) and unconvinced as to New Orleans' charms...but open to persuasion. And what better day than Hallowe'en to be won over by the home of all things Black Magic-y??

We headed directly for the French Quarter for a bit of a wander to get oriented. As I remember it, it was a lovely day and the place was gleaming in the sunshine, so it was a bit of a difference from the night before...The French Quarter is full of nice little shops selling souvenirs - the best of which was a T-shirt that said "Came to New Orleans at the same time as Katrina, and all I got was this t-shirt, a plasma screen TV, a Cadillac and a fridge freezer" with reference to all the looting that happened there - nothing like a bit of black humour, is there??

At lunchtime I sampled the delights of Gumbo, the local delicacy, at a nice little courtyard cafe. Gumbo's very similar to Jambalaya, which I had tried somewhere in Arizona I think, only spicier. After lunch we continued wandering, taking in an exhibition about Katrina and its effects on the city...the photos were shocking, showing the sort of things that we saw on the TV at the time, but most of us have long since forgotten about - cars in trees, people stranded on rooftops...There's a lot of bitterness in the area, because many people feel that although there was a lot of help in the immediate aftermath, with things like trailer homes being provided for the people whose homes had been destroyed, now they've just been left to it. It's impossible to imagine what it must be like...I think you just assume that someone would come to your rescue, but clearly that wouldn't necessarily be the case.

In the afternoon we went to Cafe du Monde, which is quite an institution in New Orleans and I sampled another local delicacy (in my bid to weigh double my usual weight by Christmas!) - Beignets. They're a sort of doughnut, completely doused in icing sugar, and are delicious! I could've quite happily eaten 7 of them, but somehow stopped myself. As we sat there a girl was busking on the pavement, singing all sorts of different stuff, and I bought her CD as a souvenir. Unluckily for her, despite it being quite warm, the heavens decided to open, but she sang on like a trooper.

That evening, after the rain cleared up, we decided to get into the spirit of things (if you'll pardon the Hallowe'en related pun!) and go on a ghost walk around the city. We were told to meet at a pub in the French Quarter, which was full of goths and generally quite scary looking people. Our guide was a guy about our age, who was dressed in a girl's vest complete with push up bra, mini skirt and platinum blonde wig. I assume that it was Hallowe'en related, and to be fair to him, he did look fairly sheepish...he advised us that it was illegal for us to walk in the road and that he'd be very grateful if we'd follow the rules, as he had regularly ended up in trouble with the police, when his 'guests' had come close to getting run over by the local boy racers, and understandably he didn't fancy spending time in a cell in his current get-up! He was a nice guy, spoke at about 150 miles an hour, but definitely knew his ghost-related stuff and told us some fairly gory stuff...In the group of 'guests' there were 4 middle-aged Americans dressed as Shaggy, Velma, Daphne and Fred from Scooby Doo, and every time they saw a dog of any kind, they went up to its owners and asked if it was Scooby, as they had lost him. At the beginning of the night I thought they were complete wallies, by the end of the night, they were inviting us to stay with them in Alabama! Lovely people, if a little over-enthusiastic - they were so impressed with what we were doing and wanted to know ALL about it. One of them told us that she had come to New Orleans partly to volunteer, and she had been gutted, because despite her best efforts, she couldn't find any authorities who would give her the opportunity to help. Rubbish.

After the walk had finished, we walked down Bourbon Street, which is the really famous one in New Orleans. There was a carnival atmosphere...costumes like you've never seen, and people throwing beaded necklaces down from the balconies of the hotels. It was wicked, but we didn;t stay long as were aware we needed to get back to the motel, as it was after dark, and where we were staying was scarier than any story our platinum-haired guide could've told us! x