Trouble in old New Orleans

Moving on to Louisiana we explored a old World War II ship that served and saw action  against the Japanese, experienced the jazz, blues and seafood of New Orleans and had some problems on our way getting out of the city. Nothing we couldn’t handle but a speed bump nonetheless.

More driving, a new city and a new attraction: USS Alabama and the other instruments of war. USS Alabama is a retired US war ship from the 40s converted to a museum. It’s huge, and probably the best location to play hide and seek in the whole world.

After wandering around in the ship for a while we took a look inside an old submarine. Sooo tight,

We learned the city of Mobile is not pronounced “mobile”, but “mobil” (like cell phone in norwegian). So there’s that. We also talked to some locals that were pretty sure that during summer time it’s around 70 degrees Celsius in Mobile. We tried to explain it probably was a bit to much (as it would make a human being reach roast beef within a few days), but they were pretty certain their converting between Fahrenheit and Celsius was correct. We nodded, knowing that they probably would burn their beefs if they went to Norway. We jumped in car and left Mobile, as the city was indeed a  “booring ass bitch town”, as a local girl at the burger joint wanted to share with us.

 

New Orleans

We found a nice parking spot online (Pelican RV something something parking). Arrived a few hours later than planned, as usual, but the provided access code for the gate worked. Hooked the RV up to the power grid, took a few beers and went to sleep.

New day, still New Orleans. We headed for the french quarters, and figured we should try to use public transportation some more. New Orleans are burning hot in april, and probably like the surface of the sun during july-august. We wandered around, looked at all the craziness, took a few (hundred) photos. Took a bite and a few beers (medium beers are actually nothing like medium. Probably close to a liter), and fell asleep in the shadows in the Louis Armstrong park.

Woke up, shot a few hundred more photos, ate icecream along the banks of Mississippi river and walked some more. We splitted up, and Svenn took all the camera equipment back to the RV. The rest of us found ourselves a bar with “3 for 1 happy hour” (or as we say in Norway – “tjuefire for åtte”) with Corona.

New split, Marius and Sjur went back to the RV with buss, Jonas and Mats wanted more craziness after dawn. New Orleans delivered. Überuber back to the RV, and heads slept before they hit the pillows.

New day, and we planned an early leave towards Austin. The only thing we had to do was to empty the black water and gray water from the RV before we left. The plumbing were clogged, so we saw (and some of us experienced) a real shit fountain. Impressive!

After some tears were spilled, and showers were taken, we started the RV, drove 10 meters, and experienced a close encounter with a palm. Appearantly the electronics controlling the sun screen roll out malfunctioned, rolling out the sun screen and destroying it. Superfun. After an hour with talking to El Monte (the company renting out the RV), we disconnected and dismantled all parts of the sun screen, putted it in the car, and concluded that “well, this won’t get fixed for this trip”.

… and now we’re heading for Austin.