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Day 4

New Orleans is best known for the world infamous Bourbon Street. This stretch of road is the most famous linear orgy in existence. With the lack of open container laws and a red light district with better advertisement than a used car lot, this place was a nonstop party.

But I wasn’t here for the debauchery. I was here for the food. I am a foodie in the traditional sense. To me, this city is a symbol of American culinary genius. I was here for beignets, muffalettas, red beans and rice, jambalaya, gumbo, turtle soup, soft shell crab, blackened drum, bread pudding, shrimp étouffée, fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried green tomatoes, fried alligator, fried crawfish, grilled crawfish, crawfish au gratin, crawfish boil…

Basically, I love food. Especially creole and cajun food.

The day began at Cafe Du Monde’s with beignets –french donuts dusted with powdered sugar– and a café au lait made with the traditional half coffee grounds, half chicory recipe. When I say “dusted with powdered sugar,” I really mean buried under several strata of the stuff. I really mean it came with its own geological formations. Rumors say that pastry might actually be hidden underneath, but our excavation teams could not substantiate those claims. Also, chicory tastes exactly like it sounds.

After a beautiful stroll down Riverwalk, taking us through the port along the great Mississippi River (read: muddy water with a hard to spell name), we visited the aquarium. Its only truly distinguishing feature was the informative jazz playing in the bathrooms. What’s informative jazz? Link included, I’m not making this stuff up.

After staring at seafood for a couple of hours, because in effect that is precisely what an aquarium in New Orleans really entails, we decided that we were hungry again. We stopped at Mulate’s, a local dive that offers live music and a boisterous dance floor that locals crowd to every night. I had the crawfish platter, serving four separate crawfish based dishes in a symphony of shellfishy goodness.

We then enjoyed a brief tour of the national WWII museum, complete with a documentary narrated by Tom Hanks. Watching Forrest Gump illustrate the horrors of total warfare and the great sacrifice that our country faced to help liberate the world from the grip of the Axis powers really worked up an appetite, so we decided to go for dinner.

Through a stroke of brilliant strategy on my parents’ part, we were able to get a table at K Paul’s Restaurant that night. For those of you unfamiliar with K Paul’s, I literally could not understate my parents’ genius in their attempts to get this reservation. Paul Prudhomme is one of the great chefs to come out of NOLA. With his substantial figure and warm bayou smile, one could only assume he exuded essence of cayenne pepper and andouille sausage. The blackened drum with jalapeño butter topped with crab meat was potentially the best plate of fish that I have ever eaten in my life. I live in a port city, so that is a huge claim. For desert I had the most amazing sweet potato-pecan pie. Absolutely amazing.

That night, I had an uncomfortably sexually charged dream involving a 6 ft. tall crawfish as Chef Paul watched on. I regret nothing.

Day 5

Today was a sad day indeed. Today we left New Orleans to hit the road again, but only after a quick visit to the French Market to pick up some last minute supplies (read:muffalettas, I can’t stop, I need help). With teary eyes, we said goodbye to NOLA and started the 7 hour long haul to College Station.

Before leaving Louisiana proper, I discovered that Zydeco is a thing. In fact, it’s actually a big deal over here. Imagine taking five or six swamp people straight from the bayou, with roughly 18 teeth among them (rounding up), and giving them a banjo, trumpet, violin, bass, accordion and washboard. My dad discovered a Zydeco radio station and for the next few hours, my mom was bouncing around like a 5 year old fed an even mix of sugary soda and cocaine. Ok, so maybe New Orleans isn’t perfect.

After a grueling stretch of road, we finally left the range of the Zydeco radio station, just in time to reach the Texas border. We pulled into the rest stop to use the bathroom. My dad and I walked in and proceeded to take the two urinals next to each other, despite the fact that the entire bathroom was empty. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a Dyson hand drier, the one that shoots a thin blade of air horizontally as one runs one’s hands up and down through the stream. I don’t know if it was the road, the heat, or the Zydeco, but I told my dad that I was going to insert my penis in the machine.

Naturally, we had a rational back and forth, discussing the pros and cons of said action. Pros: it would be an excellent experience. Cons: jail time. This went on for a while as unbeknownst to us my brother entered the room, completely unaware of our conversation. Realizing that my plan had been foiled, I gave up the fight and turned to wash up. My dad had already finished and left. I rose from the sink to dry my hands, and that’s when I saw it. My 14 year old brother had stuck his penis in the Dyson hand drier.

We locked eyes, and decided to never speak of this again.

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