Some of our friends canceled their trip to Southern Decadence because of Hurricane Gustav. Not us! We were going regardless.
We flew out Friday morning and arrived in New Orleans around 10:30 am. . We took a $30.00 cab ride to the Ritz-Carlton. We checked in to this gorgeous hotel for $99.00 a night. You can't beat that!
We met up with some friends and walked to Eat and had some lunch. We walked down Bourbon Street on the way. I thought it was really cool. It looked like what I saw on t.v. but I expected the street to be wider. When they show people throwing beads off of the balconies in to the crowds on t.v. it seems like the street is wider.
After lunch, we went back to the room and took a short nap. We kept watching the hurricane updates and decided to change our flight home from Monday to Sunday. Southwest made the changes without charging us any fees. Big kudos to Southwest.
After we changed our flight we started to head down for Drag Queen Bingo at Oz. We got there too late to play and they were just starting a strip contest. That was interesting when a couple of the contestants stripped down to their birthday suits. They were handed towels to cover up their "jewels".
After the strip contest was over we started to walk from bar to bar and check out the scene. We went to a bar called The Corner Pocket. There were naked dancers up on the bar. That was first time I saw the dancers pull out their goods for bar patrons to touch!
We had one young "straight" 18 year old dancer walk up to us and pose for a naked picture with me. (I wasn't naked, he was!) He said he was really nervous. It was his 2nd night dancing and he couldn't "get it up!"
Then we headed to a few other bars and went back to Oz. That is where I laid my eyes on the hottest "straight" dancer I have seen in a really long time. We posed for a bunch of pictures together and I tipped him for a "feel"!
We walked up stairs and wrote my name and number on a napkin and I went back to the dancer and gave it to him hoping he would call... he never did!
When I was walking back to our room at the end of the night I passed protesters against gays. It took every ounce of me not to tell them where to go. People were throwing ice at them. They want people to get in a confrontation with them. So I didn't. One guy tried to hand me a pamphlet and asked "If I believe in Jesus?" I didn't say a word and kept walking.
We called it an early night because we started drinking early in the night. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and noticed a note under our door. So I turned the light on and read it.
It was from the Ritz saying that they were closing the hotel on Saturday, they didn't know when the airport was going to shut down and no rental cars are being rented out.
I started to get really sick to my stomach thinking we were going to get stuck in New Orleans. I woke up my friend that I was staying with and we woke up our friends down the hall. We had called Southwest to get an early morning flight out and every single flight was booked. We asked if they could book us on any flight to any city, we didn't care, we just wanted out of New Orleans. There wasn't a single open seat on any flight out of New Orleans on Southwest.
I started calling other airlines and we got the same story everywhere. The scary part was not knowing when the airport would shut down.
We all packed up our stuff and headed to the airport. Southwest suggested that we get on standy-by and we could possibly get on a flight. Lucky for us, the first flight we were on standy-by we got on.
There were Federal Air Marshals carrying machine guns walking up and down the concourse in the airport. I was stunned by that. I wanted to take a picture but I didn't think it was allowed, so I didn't.
So our trip to New Orleans for Southern Decadence was fun but very short lived... maybe next year.
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