New Orleans

On Monday we arrived in NOLA and got ready straight away to have dinner on a steamboat cruise. I had fried catfish, creamed spinach and potato wedges and also tried gumbo which is a famous Louisiana dish made of crab meat, various other meat such a beef and sausage in a thick gravy style sauce, it's kind of like stew but spicier and you have it with rice. After dinner we watched a life jazz band play as we made our way back to shore.

Once we had docked we headed to the famous Bourbon street to try New Orleans' two famous cocktails, the hurricane from Pat O'Brians and the hand grenade from Tropical Isle. The recipes for each of these are included but all you really need to know is that they are huge with humongous amounts of alcohol in them! After these we were suitably drunk so obviously it was time for karaoke and if anyone ever wondered what Lady Marmalade or Journey's don't stop believing sound like when people have had ridiculous amounts of alcohol the answer is not very good!!!

After a heavy night we headed out for breakfast and decided to just have a chilled out day wondering round the French Quarter. We visited St Louis Cathedral which is the oldest cathedral in the U.S and then did a bit of shopping. There are a lot of interesting shops as they are all independent boutiques rather than chains so you can pick up some really quirky items. We then went to cafe du monde to order beignets which a famous New Orleans doughnuts without the hole in the middle and from there wandered the French market where there were more shops. Before we headed back to the hotel for a nap we went to the park named after Louis Armstrong and visited the overground graveyard where people are buried in tomb-like buildings normally with their families. I found one gravestone with the surname Webb I know it's a popular surname but whatever it's still weird! What's even weirder is that people use a family graveyard as a tourist attraction, thankfully though they haven't dropped a gift shop on the site yet like they have with everywhere else!

Once we'd all had our naps we headed out to hotel Monteleone to go to the carousel bar, which is literally what it sounds like but we couldn't get seats on the carousel so had to sit at a normal table! I had a champagne cocktail (how unusual of me) called French 007 which was vodka, pomegranate liqueur and champagne. After this we went to dinner at an authentic Louisiana restaurant where I had blackened shrimp and jambalaya which was really good and made a change from fried food.

I'm putting this out there right now, I'm one week in and sick of fried food! If one person shows me fried food when I get back to England it may be your last day on this earth.....