They might have made a commerical like this:

Hotel room in New Orleans: $500

Flight to New Orleans: $250

Meeting Mark Mullins’ twin brother, Bruce: Priceless

There really are some things that money just can’t buy.

After a bit of sleep (Mike and Lisa get up way too early), we enjoyed our tasty complementary hotel breakfast, and prepared to head out. We walked up Magazine Street. It was very quiet. Lisa then took us on a tour of the Garden District and we hit a cemetary. There was VooDoo BBQ for lunch and then we came back to the hotel to recharge ourselves and our camera batteries. My pedometer says that we walked almost six miles this morning!

I’m uploading a lot of sight seeing photos in the Day 2 album.

Day 1 is over and it was a great first day.

Tracy and I enjoyed a good lunch and a luxurious afternoon adjusting to the hotel and unpacking.
Lisa and Mike arrived around 4:30 and after we all changed and primped for no good reason beyond we are on vacation. Then we went to Napolean House to meet up with Stacey and have some Pimm’s Cups, a tasty house specialty consisting of 7-Up, lemonade, and gin, served with a fresh cucumber slice. Lisa described them as “refreshing” and she was right. Its a very “sit out on your big porch wearing a big hat trying to stay cool” type of drink.

From there we headed to Electric Ladyland tattoo as Lisa was planning to meet with a tattoo artist there and discuss a design she planned to get today. Mike, Tracy, and myself had also planned to get tattoos when Lisa got hers. But schedules got changed around and last night, Mike, Tracy, and I all took the plunge. Lisa has to wait until Friday afternoon now. It was fun and impulsive and, yes, it did hurt. Mike went first and his was the largest so while he got inked (and after we took a bunch of photos of him in the window), Leroy and Katja met up with us and we went and hung out with them at a little bar across the street. So nice to see Leroy. Not sure if we’ll see him again before St. Anne’s on Mardi Gras day or not.

After Mike was done, I was next! I got a solid black fleur de lis on my inner left ankle. I was originally thinking I wanted it to be shaded in Mardi Gras colors like Stacey and Lisa have, but then I decided to go with black because I want a tigerhawk on the other ankle and that will definitely be solid black and well, I just have to have things match. And as the guy at the shop pointed out, black goes with everything. *chuckle* Tracy was last and she was as cool as a cucumber in a Pimm’s cup ;)

After the ink was semi-dry, we went to Port of Call for Lisa’s favorite hamburgers. They were quite tasty and were served with a baked potato on the side. Really good food. Really slow waitress. I’m cutting NOLA a ton of slack because I realize the position a lot of these businesses are in, but this was one of those cases of the chick just basically forgot our table existed while everyone else around us got plenty of service. But the company was good.

After that we headed back to the hotel. We are already seriously getting our walk on. We walked down Bourbon Street and it was pretty sparse. Its interesting to see Mike and Lisa’s reactions to the post-K NOLA as they were here right before the hurricane and they really know and love the city. More serious thoughts later.

Now we are gathering ourselves together to go out and spend the day walking. Our tour guide, Lisa, has our itinery all planned out. Seriously. Its printed. I had Doogie flashbacks. ;)

Day 1 photos, including my tattoo, are up.