The next day was September 24th and we woke up to the worrying news that Hurricane Isadora had begun to move our way. It was torrential rain and looked as if it was set to stay that way but the intrepid explorers had decided to do a Voodoo Walk and nothing was going to stop us. Besides, as I pointed out, we were from Scotland where we had icy cold rain and not the namby-pamby warm stuff they get in New Orleans!! So nothing daunted, we bought some Bourbon Street ponchos, a sort of designer bin-liner, and headed off round another cemetery. I have to say that in better weather, this might have been OK but the rain just got heavier and heavier the more the day went on.
We decided after the tour to lunch in a place we’d read about called The Two Sisters. According to the guide book, this place was famed for its authentic Southern food and was patronised by the cops. We set out to find it but had some bother so eventually, we pulled over and asked directions from this black lady who was walking down the street with the cutest little girl you ever saw. When John asked if she knew of a restaurant called the Two Sisters, she said “Just that one across the street there” and we were almost on the doorstep. To cover his embarrassment, John asked her if the place was any good for lunch to which she replied, again in that Southern drawl, “I don’t know. I’m a junk food eater myself”. Priceless! Anyway, we had smothered chicken, potato salad, macaroni cheese, peas, rice and cornbread and none of us could finish it. As well as the cops, complete with their big guns, there were three fellow customers sporting the logo “Three Damn Fools Towing Company” on their shirts…….different!
When we left the restaurant, it was still torrential rain so we decided to go to the D-Day Museum which I thought would be really boring but which turned out to be exactly the opposite and we spent about 3 hours there.
We decided after the tour to lunch in a place we’d read about called The Two Sisters. According to the guide book, this place was famed for its authentic Southern food and was patronised by the cops. We set out to find it but had some bother so eventually, we pulled over and asked directions from this black lady who was walking down the street with the cutest little girl you ever saw. When John asked if she knew of a restaurant called the Two Sisters, she said “Just that one across the street there” and we were almost on the doorstep. To cover his embarrassment, John asked her if the place was any good for lunch to which she replied, again in that Southern drawl, “I don’t know. I’m a junk food eater myself”. Priceless! Anyway, we had smothered chicken, potato salad, macaroni cheese, peas, rice and cornbread and none of us could finish it. As well as the cops, complete with their big guns, there were three fellow customers sporting the logo “Three Damn Fools Towing Company” on their shirts…….different!
When we left the restaurant, it was still torrential rain so we decided to go to the D-Day Museum which I thought would be really boring but which turned out to be exactly the opposite and we spent about 3 hours there.
We then headed for another dive—this one was supposed to be the haunt of college kids and it specialised in cocktails with risqué names. (Note- Nick's Train Bar) It was there we decided that enough was enough and we really should be thinking of leaving New Orleans. We’d been told that the schools were closed the next day and we’d seen lots of evidence of sandbags being prepared and as New Orleans is built below sea-level, it was not a good place to be when a hurricane hit. Poor John & Debbie spent almost an hour calling the airlines on their cell phone and Air France were particularly unhelpful asking things like “When is the hurricane due to hit?”. It turned out that we were actually speaking to a call centre in Canada so of course, the woman there wasn’t too worried about the prospect of an impending hurricane down in New Orleans and obviously thought we were over-reacting. Eventually though, it was all sorted out even though it had cost us an additional $73 each—about £100. We had a final good time in the bar that night which Debbie and I both regretted next day when we had to leave early. (Note- The bartender evidently thought that it would be fun to get the girls a little tipsy--and started pouring gin and tonics with more and more gin and less and less tonic. The boys thought we should get some food to counteract the alcohol, so we drove the streets of NOLA in the torrential downpour searching for an open restaurant. We were told by John and Gordon that we were quite drunk when a police car stopped us- probably wondering what these crazies were doing driving around in hurricane weather- When I leaned across the car and slurring my words started to ask "Where is Liuzza's". John quickly hushed me up - afraid that we'd all end up at the police station for drunk driving!)
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