New Orleans - and the crazy folks from Kentucky

Alright, our blog is now about 2 weeks behind, time for some catch-up... our next stop brought us to the Mississippi River and the great city of New Orleans.

What we did know was that New Orleans is well-known for a great night life and live music.




What we didn't know was this:

Now, this will need some explanation for our non-American readers: the "NCAA" is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. College sports is big in America! In particular, they have this thing called March Madness, the basketball championship tournament held each year. Similar to the soccer world cup, it's played as an elimination tournament: starting from a round of 64 teams, down to the sweet sixteen, elite eight, and then - the final four.

Now, of course we were lucky and the final four would be held in New Orleans just on the day of our arrival - which had two implications: 1. Hotel rooms were 5-10 times as expensive, and 2. The city was in control of the thousands of basketball fans from the four remaining teams: Kentucky, Louisville, Ohio, and Kansas.

Long story short, we decided to nevertheless stay in town for one night and started to dive into the nightlife.

Great live music at our first stop, "The Spotted Cat Music Club" in Marigny...

... which was just a warm-up to the famous Bourbon street, right in the "French Quarter".











Party and drunken basketball fans everywhere on the street...

The biggest party of all was right on the Mississippi river, where Jimmy Buffett was giving a free concert.

Actually, this was a close as we could get to him - the area was completely overcrowded. But we could hear him very well, in particular the extended 10 minute performance of his all-time classic "Cheeseburger in Paradise". Twice.

And, of course there were fireworks!

And the live music went on all night.

Next morning, we went back to the French Quarter to see it by day. Not much different, actually: more live music...

These guys were pretty cool, the guy on the left was performing step dance while the band was playing. We ended up buying their CD (and probably already listened to it about a hundred times in the car...)

 More sightseeing...

 

Oh, and of course, the other famous thing in New Orleans is Mardi Gras. For those who don't know: that's their version of carnival. And just like in cities like Cologne in Germany, where some people seem to believe that carnival should be all year, they have Mardi Gras stores open all year round:

Finally, on our way out, we looked at some of the amazing houses in the "Garden District". This one here actually got recently bought by Sandra Bullock for about $2.5 million.

Oh, and about that Basketball thing: Kentucky beat Kansas in the championship game, and all the Kentucky fans turned New Orleans in a madhouse. 

Glad we were already out of town by then! :-)