Cool things to do in New Orleans

I'm heading to NOLA tonight for work and am staying until Sunday afternoon, but will have a lot of free time to explore. I haven't been to the city since I was like 13, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the sights as an adult.

I need some help creating a list of things to see, eat, and drink.

What are some cool historical bars? Somewhere to eat something crazy? What stuff should I avoid?

And most importantly, is it legal to take pictures of drunk people who pass out on car hoods in alleyways? What if I leave them cash?

I've been through New Orleans many times but I've only stopped and did stuff once. That was Lalapalooza back in 94 or 95. Once we arrived at my buds cousins house we broke up about 6 or 8 fat roaches in the ashtray and rolled a fat joint. Would have been from the bag but they were out when we got there. After smoking it and before bed my bud who used to live in New Orleans told me not to go anywhere alone. I took his advice. The next morning we woke and were getting ready for the concert. My buds cousins boyfriend (whew) was in the living room getting ready too. He had a coffee grinder full of weed and systematically rolling fat joint after fat joint. We rolled... out and picked up some of their friends then went to some huge park. Sat on a picnic table and burned. We're late. They brushed me off saying the band I wanted to see wasn't good anyway. It was Sonic Youth and I missed them. Oh well... We rolled out again and made it to the parking lot. We burned again. We walked the long road to the gates and entered the arena. It was packed! There were freaks everywhere! I suddenly felt normal. My buds cousins boyfriend, henceforth known as our guy, said he could score us some acid. It was my firstish time. I had taken a small bit before but it wasn't even a half a hit. Anyway back to our guy. We sat down and burned while he went for the LSD. He came back and it was red blotter with a Hershey Kiss. On my tongue it went. Boring bits here, mostly walking around and taking in the scene. We went and bought a T-Shirt. Smashing Pumpkins was my favorite band at the time so I bought one of their shirts that said "Smile." So, the acid is kicking in and we found a guy. We talked and talked and talked. Then we followed him. We walked and walked and walked. Oh! Look! A joint on the ground. He picked it up. We walked and walked and walked. Oh! Look! A lighter on the ground. It must be a sign that we should smoke that joint! We sat down right there and burned it. In hindsight that was an extremely bad idea, but nothing bad happened so we got away with it I guess. Bands played, Nick Cave, George Clinton, L7... Then, about the time I was peaking, the Beastie Boys came on stage and the whole place blew up! The crowd was crazy. We decided we needed to experience the whole thing from the front. The whole front would shift from left to right about 10 foot. You had no choice but to move with it. We did that for a while then went to the back. Pumpkins came out and rocked. We met back up with our guy. He invited us to come with him and do some X but we had to get back. To Mississippi. The next day it felt like someone pulled out my soul.

Currently planning to go back. This time to the Zoo and aquarium with the kids so no adult stuff. You should at least try some food. One of the best things about going ANYWHERE is the food they cook.

Saturday night you need to go to Bourbon St. I dont care for it too much anymore because of the crowds and the drunks. But it was fun when I liked it.

Pat O's is a good bar to visit. There are plenty of good bars, as well as plenty of shitty ones. Strip clubs are the same way too.

Sunday morning would be a good time to go to a nice place for brunch and get some beignets (ben-yays). That is an absolute must.

The WWII Museum is also pretty cool if you like that, so is the Aquarium.

use breasts to collect cheap strings of plastic beads.

wait another year for mardi gras to come around and actually go to new orleans when you're suppose to instead of near the beginning of the penitential season of lent.

you should be mortifying your flesh now, not exposing your fleshly orbs.

Visit lil wayne's place of birth and growth, hollygrove street

You can probably pick up some crack cocaine down there too if you feel so inclined

I lived in New Orleans but I didn't see this thread until now so I guess my advice would fall upon deaf ears.

Sorry.

It was awesome -- Bourbon street was scary but only because I thought I was going to get vomited on.

Speaking of getting vomited on, remind me to tell you guys later about the projectile vomit-er who sat next to me on the plane.

Tell us about the projectile vomiter who sat next to you on the plane.

One shitty thing about Southwest is that if you are on a full flight and you're with someone, one of you totally has to sit in the middle. This wouldn't have been a big deal (I'm tiny and can comfortably sit Indian-style on a plane) except that the very last seat was in our row, and the very last person needing a seat was a mammoth. I want to stress that "mammoth" is still a kinder word than what I should use.

So there I am about 15 minutes into a 90 minute flight, sitting practically in my boyfriend's lap because of the sheer volume of the mammoth, doing a crossword puzzle and trying to ignore the growing crick in my spine. I'm going to get drunk on the plane, anyway, and the mammoth is sleeping so it's not that big of a deal. A minor annoyance.

Suddenly, we hear a sneeze.

Just kidding, it wasn't a sneeze! She literally vomited in her sleep, into the window and onto the back of the seat in front of her. I saw a glob of it sliding down the tray table in front of me and bolted over my boyfriend and into the aisle.

The cool part of the story is that the flight crew was based in Las Vegas, so they were prepared and unfazed -- within moments, my boyfriend and I were standing in the back of the plane drinking free booze -- which we got to continue doing until the very last ten minutes of the flight. However, those last ten minutes were not worth the free booze. As a result of the mammoth's spewfest, the stench coming from her was just ungodly. In fact, the entire back half of the plane smelled like something out of a bad episode of Mythbusters. You know the one where they put pig carcasses in a car and put the car in a hot warehouse for like a month and then try to get the smell out? That bad.

The worst part is that she never stopped vomiting. Seriously, they brought her two large-size Hefty bags and she filled them both up. How is this even possible? I don't understand how anyone can vomit that much. It's unfathomable and I can't believe I didn't get a free flight out of it, even if I did get to drink what was probably half a bottle of scotch.

Can anyone tell me a more horrifying plane story? I've probably flown 300 times in my life and I've never seen anything like what happened on that plane. I feel like most of my drinking in NOLA was to forget that experience.

I think I'd have tried to sit in the flight attendants seats...

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Originally Posted by solecistic

Can anyone tell me a more horrifying plane story? I've probably flown 300 times in my life and I've never seen anything like what happened on that plane. I feel like most of my drinking in NOLA was to forget that experience.

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I flew from LGA to ATL last week and I was number 9 on the upgrade list. Only 11 people got upgraded. It was bad enough that I had to sweat it out all the way to the day of, but then I almost had to fly coach.

Horrible. I wrote Delta a letter. Raise prices, dickbags.

The kid on the red-eye I was on back from the Dominican Republic began having a seizure mid-flight, foam/spit and everything.

Spoiler

I was on a flight where a man got sick and had to be evac'd before the plane left the ground, and then the pilot came on to say "I don't want to have to talk about the gorilla in the room, but no one can identify his bags" something that no one had really thought of. Naturally, there was now a fear we were all going to be bombed by this now off-the-plane man. Old people started losing their shit.

I was flying into San Francisco one time and the plane did the most insane evasion maneuver I've ever felt a plane do before. One moment we were descending and the next the entire plane was at at 60 degree lateral angle. Practically everyone on the plane screamed. The hottie in the seat next to me got a very rude awakening. Pilot never explained why.

I personally kept a plane from taking off in Chicago headed toward DC once.


I was on a flight from Vegas to San Francisco and the plane couldn't land due to visibility and we simply circled around until, literally, we ran out of gas and had to land an hour away and wait six hours for the visibility to clear up.

If you've ever flown into San Diego, simply landing there is heart-attack inducing.

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Originally Posted by solecistic

barf story

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That's really awful. I probably flown somewhere over a dozen times in my life, but they've all been very pleasant trips. I remember being a kid and scared in my youth to ever fly. I remember flying in on those tiny little propellor planes because my dad found a cheap deal through a friend to fly from Indiana to Wisconsin. That was a very bumpy ride.

Recently though, I think it was back in November, when I flew off an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Arabian gulf did I really have fun. I think the best way to describe it is flying a tank off a runway the length of a football field. As soon as the plane left the flight deck it sank and probably skimmed the top of the water before ascending. It felt like a roller coaster. Then we were turning and banking at some very steep angles. Going off an aircraft carrier is also scary because if you don't make it you'll fall into the ocean right in front of a ship the size of the empire state building and crushed to bits. Needless to say, I was thoroughly excited.

The flight from Bahrain to Virginia was about 24 hours and the worst flight experience to date. The last time I flew over the ocean was over the Pacific when I was six, and I can barely remember the experience. Having to do it now, eating the crappy airline food, feeling dirty from not showering, breathing in recirculated air, babies crying, people snoring, having the back of my chair kicked, and having my clock going back several hours, this is something I'm not use to so I was horribly disgruntled. I guess this is the norm for regular flyers, but I'd rather not have a job where I experience that a lot. I'd probably swear off flying for a while if someone vomitted because just being around cleaned up vomit is still very horrible.

MPR, long flights suck for everyone. You just hope your company will spring for first class.

The only difference for a regular flyer and someone like you is that we have better tools and processes for making ourselves comfortable. Noise-cancelling headphones (and noise-isolating earbuds), exit rows (or preferred economy seating), early boarding, etc, all add together to make for a more pleasant experience. I throw everything into the overhead (laptop bag included) and only remove my iPad and Kindle for the flight, and then just pull my luggage down when I need anything else (like, say, a change of clothes--I usually start in shorts, and put sweats on top) It's also important to get up regularly to stretch and walk around, brush your teeth and rinse your mouth a couple times throughout the flight (if it's over 12-15 hours), etc. You probably don't want to use the water (or, really, touch any surfaces) in the bathrooms though. Bring sanitizer for that, especially.