Day Two: Go Greyhound!

We decide to hang in the hotel in Baton Rouge a little longer than planned and take a later bus to New Orleans. We'll miss Jazz Fest for the day, but it's all good. We're on vacation. I quietly tuck my charts, graphs and to do lists in my bag and try to learn how to relax. This is strange. I am someone who is VERY relaxed in life...which begs the question, why am I so Type A on vacation?

Eventually we make our way to the Greyhound station in Baton Rouge. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore. There isn't much around except a Popeye's chicken next door. There is a sign in the window that reminds the happy tourists of the devastation that happened not so long ago and not so far away. Is it just me, or is it strange that you can get your free cell phone in a chicken joint? Only in America!



And this too! Only in America!



The neighbourhood.



At the bus station there's another gun sign. All these signs telling me not to carry guns are begininning to make me feel like I SHOULD be carrying a gun. Maybe Chuck Heston isn't so creepy after all...



This is what we see pulling out of the bus station on our way to New Orleans. Hello, white liberal guilt! Where you been at? This is just heartbreaking.



The bus is loaded with passengers, one of them being the twitchy, scruffy guy that sat across the aisle from us. If I had to guess what his name was, I'd have gone with "Cleatus" or, if I was in a Blaxploitation film "Cracka". Just when we thought we were in for some prime people watching the straggley looking young man pulls out a business text book. SHAME on us. The Robeau thinks maybe he'll give him the business magazines he picked up for the trip when we arrive in New Orleans. Oh, look at that, Cleatus is reading out loud from the book. Or is he just mumbling? Wait, wait, wait...DID HE JUST RIP A PAGE OUT OF THE BOOK AND BLOW HIS NOSE WITH IT????????? The Robeau kept his magazines. I tried to keep my eyes closed for the rest of the trip.

About an hour later we arrived in New Orleans, the haunting Superdome greeting us.



Outside the bus station there are loud speakers and they are BLASTING Dexter Gordon playing Gershwin (I Was Doing All Right). Freddie Hubbard solos, the nice taxi driver puts my luggage in the trunk and my whole body relaxes. To the French Quarter!