NOLA OR BUST Part II

It is the next day and I am sitting in a café on Canal Street with coffee and a croissant. I stepped into my hotel room at around 9:30. See, I told you it wouldn’t be a 12 hour trip. The trip to Atlanta about 4 hours late? I decided to walk the length of that airport due to nausea from flight. I find my gate like a good minor leaguer. I then go back to a food court of sorts. Panda Express is not as good as their marketing but,  It was carbs and sodium and that seemed to heal me.

Ahh nothin soothes the weary white male travellor like some good old fashioned MSG.
(Or it would if it hadn't been vilified and taken out of food)

As I tried to board the plane, the nice woman at the counter told me I had to give her my bag. Perfect! I know this game and tell her that I have a pink tag and will leave at the end of the ramp-thing. She says “no, we need to check it to your final destination.” I did all this bag shopping and freaking out to avoid this. They change the rules at airport like the stairs at Hogwarts and I am openly a muggle. Once de-bagged and re-boarded, the plane ride was quick. Real quick. In my 11.5 hours, I was in the air a total of 1.5. The Wright brothers got it wrong. The transportation infrastructure should have stopped with cars and trains. The other option is a pilots license and a small airport. Anybody want to go in halvsies?

Look you can pick which half you want. I bet we could get a deal.

I get to NOLA and prepare to call the hotel shuttle. There isn’t one. Cue the quiet rumblings of panic. What does a good boy scout with some anxiety do? Check a map to see if it is reasonably walkable. Fourteen miles is just at the edge of that. Public Transport doesn’t come to the airport. I figure out that there is one shared shuttle system and work out purchasing a round trip ticket on it. That takes another hour to get to my hotel. I understand what cattle feel like with all this moving around with no choice but to just go with it.

I was cow number 108. No guys its fine. ITS FINE. I'M FINE

Once I am at the hotel I step out into NOLA. The food is amazing but I always forget the smell. I was too late and missed the actual St. Patrick’s Day parade by about an hour but still got the smell. I check in, excited to be here. They explain the elevator as such. “Put in your number and it will tell you which elevator to get on.” I am not an amateur elevator user. I know how they work. These are the worst instructions ever until I walk over to the elevator bank. There is a bank of 6 elevators and a key pad where you put in your floor and it tells you which elevator to get on. This is kind of cool. The major issue is the number of people to speed of elevator to number of elevators. Sometimes you put in your floor and get ?? or XX for the elevator you should get on. Other times you wait, and I am not embellishing, 5-10 minutes for an elevator.

This was not appreciated at the end of my day. But I am here and going to enjoy the heck out of it. By that I mean the eating.