I don’t know why, but the past few years I’ve been trying harder to see more states and big cities in the U.S., instead of heading out of the country every time I travel somewhere new. I ended up in New Orleans for the last six days, and have to say that it was a very fun trip. If you’ve never been, you have to go there at some point even if you aren’t much of a partier it would still be a fun trip to make. I’m not sure where this post will take me, but I thought I should write about the trip since I haven’t been paying attention to the sports world as much as normal. Since I have family that reads the blog it will let them know about the trip as well.

My trip started with heading to the New Orleans Arena to watch the Bulls vs. Hornets. Rose vs. CP3 was quite the match up to see first-hand. I’m still not really sure who is better. It’s no secret that Rose has a much better team surrounding him. After watching them go at it, there’s no question in my mind that Paul was the better PG that night even though his team lost. The main I came to that conclusion after watching them duel, is because Paul plays much better defense. Offensively I feel like they were equals, so defense was the tie breaker. The best guy on the floor that night was surprisingly, Marcus Thorton. He couldn’t miss, and was taking Bogans to school all game long! One of the coolest things they do there that I didn’t think I’d like was the “woooo” they scream after every free throw CP3 makes. I wonder if that will follow him to his next team when he leaves New Orleans? I was also wondering how the people there felt about Stern and Co. owning their team. Unsurprisingly, most the people I talked to seemed to just be happy they still have a team in their city.

Everything in Nawlins is old. I usually think of something as old when it’s from the 50’s or 60’s, but there, everything was built back in the 1800’s. The buildings are very close together, the roads are narrow, and if there weren’t cars everywhere you could fool me into thinking it was a time that my grandparents grew up in. Bourbon Street is a strange type of party scene, but VERY fun. It didn’t matter what night of the week it was, it was going off. I think I should’ve gone when I was in college. I really liked how nearly every bar had a courtyard in the back. The walk up bars were cool too, so if you just felt like walking the street with a drink you could. Live brass band music left and right is impossible to argue with as you stroll from one place to the next. Frenchman Street was amazing too. It’s where the locals hang out to see live Jazz every night in about 8 different bars scattered along the street. The food was nose sweat spicy, and lived up to all the hype. I’m also somewhat of an aquarium buff since I lived in Monterey for five years. The Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans was amazing, and had a wide array of displays, and some fish I’d never seen. It was easily one of the top two of the six I’ve been to.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are loved by everyone in New Orleans. We went on a couple of tours, and on both of them I think BraJolie were mentioned numerous times whenever they could be mentioned like where they lived, where their kids go to school, what their favorite bar was, and where they like to eat breakfast, etc. It was a semi-weird celebrity crush the city has going on with those two. Maybe it was all those houses that they built in the flooded areas that won them over. I was shocked to see how many vacant houses/lots there still are five years after Katrina. It’s truly sad, when we are wasting money overseas on wars and not helping our own citizens. I won’t beat that dead horse more than it already has been beaten though. Another thing I found interesting was I saw people wearing nearly as much LSU gear as Saints gear in the streets. I thought it was strange since Baton Rouge was an hour and a half away, and thought the Saints would at least rule New Orleans. I saw more LSU gear than Tulane and Layola gear which are the two colleges actually based in New Orleans. I tried to get into a few SEC sucks conversations, but nobody was having it. Probably a good thing.