Hello everyone! We are in a very hot and sticky New Orleans!!!!! We arrived here right in the middle of Jazz Fest, which is the biggest and best Jazz festival in the world. We're not too much into Jazz, but there is all kinds of live music going on in the streets, cafes, parks and squares. We have been to 3 free mini-festivals, plus the actual Jazz Fest (which is a bit like V but with more chairs and blankets and wierder dancing). We are compiling a CD of movies of some very white middle class Jazz Cats throwing their best shapes on the dancefloor. We found it hard to find a room while the festival was on - we ended up staying in the kids section of an apartment, but it was actually a bit of luxury with a bath and TV. New Orleans is a lot of fun and the people are really friendly. The famous Bourbon St is awful - a bit like a seedier version of Broad St in Brum with plenty of strip joints and pavement pizzas. But there are plenty of nice places to go. Some of the architecture is beautiful, those parts of the city definately have character. But there are poorer parts which are pretty rough. Despite its history, New Orleans is still very racially segragated. The poorer black population basically has rubbish jobs in the service industry. Blues and Jazz is music of black origin, but the people who go to the concerts and clubs are all white and middle class. A lady was telling us that when Jazz Fest and the Jazz clubs in town got big and turned into a tourism/money making opportunity, the prices went up and the black people (who started it all) were priced out/made to feel unwelcome. It's a real problem here, but nobody seems to be able to try and sort it out. Anyway, we're off to Vancouver on Monday, back to the cold and rain. Love, Stew and Marie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx