Southern Comfort: Day 12

Well New Orleans is just great! I'll gloss over the fact that is rather chintzy and touristy, and focus on the positives.

99% of the American towns I've ever visited and entirely homogeneous. Every town has the 6 or 7 major fast food stores, half a dozen of the major banks, and a smattering of bail bond stores and advertisements for litigation attorneys. And that's it. You could be in Palm Springs, or Biloxi and the only way you could tell the difference between the two is the weather. What happened to all the mom & pop homespun eateries? What happened to the artisanal bakeries? Independent hardware stores? Even indi gas stations would be something, but I guess the big corporations rule and the taco you get in one town is just the same as you'll get in another. Quite refreshingly, New Orleans still has a few gems still knocking around that don't come with a corporate guarantee of homogeny or your money back. I'll felt quite warm about walking in to cafes and feeling mildly apprehensive about the standard of fare on offer. Might be great, might be shockingly poor. It's the kind of danger I was hoping for, rather than the collateral damage in a motel drive-by shooting sort.

So my current hotel really is the sort of place I ought to spend more time in really. The idea is to always stay somewhere you'll stumble across likeminded people and share stories, tips and even travel alongside. But that doesn't really apply in the USA. There's no backpacker community as such, so there really is no stumbling to be had. I probably did know that, but it hadn't reached my consciousness before now. So I'm glad I've ended up in a nice place for the last significant leg of my USA trip. I wonder if Mexico will be different?

Some might consider this to be an intrepid adventure, some may think it the holiday from hell, but spending some time in places like Mobile, Savannah and now New Orleans always makes me smile.

It's a bit swampy, but terrifically dramatic