Once we'd had a sufficient sleep in (after our days of little sleep) we tried to sort out our itinerary up until we leave USA, since it's a lot cheaper to book in advance. Last night we had settled on the plan of leaving New Orleans on Monday, going to Orlando (since we don't want to be there on a weekend) then Miami and onto New York, but the flight price had changed and it was much cheaper to fly on Friday, so we decided to go to Miami first. New York hostels were pretty expensive, so we booked our first room on AirBnB- a website where people rent out their homes to travellers, basically couch surfing but with the (hopefully) security of paying money for the room.

Annoyingly, the hostel washing machines are only for use after 6pm, and last night there was a big queue for them, and our washing situation was getting pretty desperate, so we had to visit the launderette nearby, which the receptionist described as being 3 blocks away, and then one block to the right, but he didn't seem to understand the notion of a block as it was a lot further away than that. The washing only took 25 minutes so we stayed there, and watched the TV/ read the magazines/ got advice on restaurants to visit from the launderette owner until our washing was pretty much dry and then we could go back and Skype Jane/ Lucy. We thought we may as well finish booking the rest of our trip, and then we got the bus into the French Quarter.

We started walking in the wrong direction, but it was quite good as an American couple gave us a lesson on how to cross the road (we were confused as to what counts as Jaywalking, and when you can cross the road legally).

Back on the right path, we asked a man if the road we were on was Ducarat Street (where the restaurant the launderette owner had recommended was), and he confirmed it was and what were we looking for. We said that we were looking for the restaurant, and that we were looking for a place to try out all the New Orleans cuisine, but that we were vegetarians but that we ate fish and seafood, but our budget was $10-15. He thought this was quite a hard specification to fit, but offered to point out some places on his way to Hermes, the bar owned and next to Antoine's (famous) restaurant, and then offered to buy us a cup of gumbo each, in the name of good hospitality, and then we could buy a starter somewhere else if we were still hungry. On the way we passed a praline shop, another New Orleans speciality, and the lady behind the counter gave us a sampler.

Steven (the guy) ordered us the gumbo, and himself some oyster Rockefeller, and offered us one, both of which were delicious. He mentioned that he had a wife which made me relax a little (in fact throughout the night we kept expecting him to turn out to be weird, but he was just a genuinely nice man, who wanted to show the tourists New Orleans). We guess that he was the owner of his oil rigging machinery business, as he showed business people around quite regularly when he was making sales, so he was a very good tour guide. We said that we wanted to try a hurricane cocktail (apparently a famous drink from around here) and so he took us to Pat O'Brien's, which had a huge courtyard but was still very busy, even on a Tuesday. You could order the cocktail with the hurricane glass to keep as a souvenir, but we got it in a takeaway cup instead, which we could take from the pub and walk around with along Bourbon Street, which was very lively with lots of live music venues, one of which had a jazz band playing, which we listened into from outside of the open doors. This was a more laid back band, with people sat at tables, than the one we visited later on in the night.

Jackson square was extremely striking at night, with the statue in front of the illuminated church, although it started raining quite heavily, so we found shelter in the sports bar on the corner, where me and Alice shared a bourbon infused pecan pie (not as 3-dimensional as mums!), and then we headed to Frenchmen street, which is where one of the hostel recommended bars were; 'The Spotted Cat'. You could tell that Steven wasn't so keen on this place, as it was more packed with people dancing as opposed to the sit down one on Bourbon Street, so I suggested we leave pretty soon after that, and get the bus.