17th Dec - Okay, we have to be honest about New Orleans, we don't really like it!Its really hard to admit that because we have met some lovely people who live here since we arrived but the truth is, New Orleans is dangerous outside of the touristy French Quarter.It's a city of contrast.The first night we went out here we were walking from our hotel to Bourbon Street (the main street which runs through the French Quarter and is full of bars, take-out food places, sex shops and novelty items shops) to check out some of the bars when a panhandler (or beggar as we would call them) cycled up to us and offered me a rose which he wanted Ralph to buy.I refused the rose and the guy simply cycled away in front of us.Two guys walking towards us had seen this interaction and called the beggar over to them.Ralph and I both thought that they were going to give him some cash as the poor chap was obviously hungry.One of the guys then pushed the beggar off the bike on to the floor, got him by the throat, pulled out a police badge and threatened him with a beating and jail if he ever saw him do that again.Ralph and I were totally appalled.The beggar had politely asked us to buy the flower and, after we refused, he left us alone immediately.To see him pushed to the floor and held by the throat and kicked by a seemingly drunken cop was terrible.To counter this, we were in a gay bar later and got the best night's entertainment from our extremely camp barman Sammy who insisted, on finding out we were from England, in putting a Little Britain clip and a Robbie Williams video on the big screen.He also insisted in making little bow ties from napkins to put round Ralph's bottles of beer as "he didn't want his fingers to get cold or wet!".He was such a laugh, showing me his best J-Lo dancing and telling us wonderful stories while we were there.Its such a shame because people who made our visit to New Orleans wonderful, like Sammy, the amazing piano player we spoke to in a jazz bar, and a lady at the carnival who had lived there for 24 years, were spoiled by the many places in New Orleans you just don't feel safe and the people who make that situation worse.The other sad thing is that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.The city therefore decided to rebuild and renovate the French Quarter, being the tourist area of the city.Of course this makes total sense as the sooner they could get the tourist area back up and running the sooner tourists would come back and spend money which would pay for the other areas to be rebuilt and renovated.The problem with this is that as soon as you step out of the French Quarter it feels dangerous and has a totally different feel and is full of people resentful because the areas in which they live are still falling to pieces and crumbing everyday while drunk tourists stumble around the Bourbon Street.

We headed out today determined to make up for it being rained off yesterday and started off at the Farmers Market.The tradition here has always been that there have been three markets combined under one name; a farmers market selling fresh produce, a butchers market and a "tat market" (Ralph's words!) which sells things like suitcases, Mardi Gras beads, Mardi Gras masks etc.Unfortunately Hurricane Katrina destroyed the farmers market and butchers market, which they are still in the process of reconstructing, leaving only the "tat" market left.After a quick look around we headed to the famous Café du Monde which has been in New Orleans since the 1860's and only sells strong coffee and French donuts called Beignets (like donuts you get at a British funfair but rectangle in shape with icing sugar piled on top - extremely sweet but Ralph loved them).It's open 24 hours a day and is always busy, even though you have to sit outside under a sort of tarpaulin on cold days like today.We then headed to the St Louis Cathedral and, after taking a quick look inside, we headed next door to the Louisiana State Museum which has a year-round exhibit about the origins and meanings of Mardi Gras.We would recommend that anyone going to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras or the carnivals visits there first.Its full of photographs and videos explaining everything you would need to know about the festivities and even has costumes at the end that you can try on if you are stupid enough to want to take a picture of yourself in them (which obviously we did).Mardi Gras occurs all over the South and consists of different things in different places.In some more remote areas people wear masks and ride on horseback, collecting items from the people of each village to make a Gumbo at the end (a type of Cajun stew).In New Orleans it consists of everyone getting dressed up in weird and wonderful costumes and masks (all Mardi Gras have to have masks and beads) and parade around the city on floats, throwing things to the crowd including beads, coins, flowers etc.Mardi Gras occurs 47 days before Easter every year, which is why it's a different date every year.In the month before that they celebrate Carnival, which are the festivities leading up to Mardi Gras (French for "Fat Tuesday").Mardi Gras colours are gold for power, green for faith and purple for justice.Hopefully from our photographs from both the carnival parade and the museum you can see the effort that goes into the costumes and the organisation of these events.Next we headed to Louis Armstrong Park and Congo Square.Here, African immigrants used to congregate. Bringing their old African dances, rhythms and Negro Spiritual songs, and mixing them with local music styles, they created the first forms of jazz, and is therefore known as the birthplace of jazz. What a disappointment!We can only assume that the park was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina as, although we could see it through the gates, they were locked and we could not get access.Instead we had to step over the tramps who were sleeping by the gates to get through.We then headed to the South of the city to catch the ferry to Algiers Point, across the Mississippi River.This is where Mardi Gras World is based which is a company that designs and builds all the floats for the different Mardi Gras "Krewes" taking part each year.Algiers Point is extremely run down and a free shuttle bus takes you from the ferry direct to Mardi Gras World.Ralph and I originally thought this was just out of courtesy but later, after we decided to walk the 10 minutes back to the ferry, decided that it was probably for safety reasons.We ended up not going into Mardi Gras World as it looked extremely tacky and cost $17.00 (there are much better things we could spend $17.00 dollars on).Ralph just took some pictures of the floats they are working on in the entrance and we decided to walk back.We did have a laugh though as one of the selling points for taking the Mardi Gras World tour was that you got to meet the owner, Blaine Kern, who is around 80 but you would not believe he was he a day over 50.Anyway, as we started our walk back we met and spoke to him in the car park!Result!Then, this is the bit you never want parents to read, but we have to put it in, we got into a really dangerous situation with three drugged-up youths on the ferry back.They started staring at us as we were waiting for the boat and it was obvious they were trying to provoke Ralph or I into a reaction.After staring at us for literally minutes, extremely close to us, they started asking about my brand of trainers and asking to see the bottoms to see of they were skater shoes.We have since found out that this is a con where people do this and then steal your shoes when you lift them up to show you the bottoms.We got onto the ferry and they followed us to the back and began the staring again.They then got into a confrontation with a tramp when they stole his bag and some of the contents, including a huge cosh which the leader put down his trousers.Its hard to describe the atmosphere on that ferry but it was really frightening and neither of us could wait to get off.Ralph thought that if it was him against one of them he would have a chance of defending us, but he was not going to come out the winner against three.We made our way to the front of the ferry to get off first and they followed and then hotfooted it as soon as the gate was lowered.We noticed that they were all following us but had split up and so were covering all avenues that we could take so we did the best thing we could think of in this situation… we headed into a casino we saw across the road.We knew that the casino would be full of people (gambling is big here even in the daytime) and, most of all, jam packed full of security and CCTV.We were right, after a few minutes there was no sight of the three guys and we tentatively headed out of the casino and back towards the French Quarter, firmly deciding that we did not like New Orleans!!We headed back to the hotel and decided to go to one of the better streets in the French Quarter - Royal Street.This street runs parallel to Bourbon Street but it could be a million miles away.It's totally beautiful and full of little boutiques, antique shops and top class restaurants.We found a restaurant called Orleans Grapevine between Royal Street and Bourbon Street and had one of the best meals we have had since we have been in the US (even though Ralph is off his food at the moment - never thought I'd use those words in the same sentence - due to the fact he is on antibiotics).Its highly recommended and don't be put off by the fact that it is mainly a wine bar, the food is out of this world.

18th - We drove back to the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to take the free tour around the facility where they test the engines which take the shuttles into space.When they do the tests it creates so much steam that rain clouds are created and so the Space Centre makes its own weather!Even though there is an 11 mile sound buffer zone around the Centre, the Saturn V moonrocket tests in the 60s could be heard as far away as Baton Rouge in Louisiana and Mobile in Alabama (each around 60 miles away). It also registered on the Richter scale as a minor earthquake!The space centre we were dropped off at after the tour around the facilities was quite small but well worth a visit, especially as it was free.We then headed back towards New Orleans, calling in at the Michoud Space Center which I was happy to find does not have a visitor centre and does not offer tours unless you are in a group of 15 or more - yey!!We therefore got back to New Orleans and drove around the other parts of the city we had not seen (we decided after yesterday's experience that this was probably the best way to get around outside the safety of the French Quarter) and then settled into our hotel for a quiet night with a pizza!

19th - We had a quiet and relaxing day watching films on the hotel t.v. as we had seen everything we wanted to in New Orleans and the weather was horrendous, and then we got ready for the Carnival.The Carnival was to be a walking parade with floats and horses around the French Quarter held by the Krewe du Vieux and this year entitled "The Magical Misery Tour".They have a different theme every year and the Krewe du Vieux always ensure their themes are politically and socially satirical and often crude.The Krewe keep their membership number to 900 in exchange for the police and city agreeing that they can be the only Krewe to walk their parade around the French Quarter (all others at later carnivals and on Mardi Gras use motorised floats and go around the major roads as opposed to the tourist area).We headed out on the coldest night we have known so far - it was absolutely freezing and we had our winter hats and scarves on again.There were loads of people out on the streets starting to form lines down the sides of the roads in expectation and the atmosphere was electric.It is a hard thing to describe but it was a bit like waiting for the bonfire to be lit and the fireworks to go off on Bonfire Night; there was a huge sense of expectation and community.We spoke to a lady who has lived in New Orleans for 24 years and got totally wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.She has spent all the money she has returning and fighting to rebuild her home.It was a strange conversation and one we have become used to in New Orleans but she started by thanking us a million times over for visiting New Orleans and spending money which will help to rebuild her city.In the next breath she then told us she hated people from 'out of town' as they were not as entitled as she was to see the carnivals etc.We have had this conversation a lot with the people of New Orleans, they seem to want our tourist money but without the hassle of the tourists.After waiting what seemed like an age (Ralph looked so cold the women offered to nip home and get him a "comforter" (like a duvet!) the parade began and it was magnificent.Jazz musicians playing drums, trombones etc split the parade after every float and the drunken paraders threw out commemorative plastic cups, Mardi Gras beads, leaflets, bumper stickers, flowers, coins etc to the waiting crowds.I was thrilled to get some of each of these - and was particularly proud of my commemorative plastic cup which I had coveted from the beginning.We took our treasures back to the hotel room, had a quick warm and then headed out for our last meal in New Orleans.So, our advise has to be, go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras or one of the carnival parades such as the Krewe du Vieux, something not to be missed, but arrive the day before, have a great Mardi Gras, and then leave a day or two after, but don't leave the French Quarter and don't stay any longer.