New Orleans 3: Tokyo Drift

So this past weekend, I took yet another trip down to New Orleans in the hope that there would be no hurricanes to evacuate from nor any catastrophic car crashes that lead to concussions. For the purposes of history, I will henceforth refer to this trip as "New Orleans 3: Toyko Drift".

Instead of working all day Friday like suckers and leaving late at night, we decided to take the entire day off and get out to an early start. We left houston around 10:00am and made a straight shot to Lafayette, LA. No stopping in the death trap that is Orange, TX this time around. The main reason for stopping in Lafayette was to hit up the Krystal Burger. In fact, it would be safe to say that the main reason for this entire trip was food related as we had free buffet coupons for the casino in New Orleans.

After leaving Lafayette, we headed straight for New Orleans and made it there around 5:00 in the afternoon. The smell of vomit and urine from the weekend before (Mardi Gras) was still quite pungent in the night air. We hotel'd everyone (even the mayor) and then proceeded to what would turn out to be the main attraction for the trip: the casino. Most all of us had either free slot play or table match play coupons to burn through. Being a Friday, the table stakes were already at a $10 minimum with most being $15. Undeterred, we pretended to be high rollers by getting a hundie stack of nickels and playing at the $15 craps table.

Now if you know anything about craps, you will know that most people play the pass line and take odds respectively. Realizing that strategy had never worked out for me before, I proceeded to play the "wrong way" by playing the Don't Pass line. Needless to say, all of us that played ended up substantially ahead by the end of the session. Christine did exceptionally well, yet again, despite the fact that she continually said she had no idea what she was betting or even how she was winning monies.

After cleaning up at the craps table, we went out to Mother's for some Po'Boys. Quite frankly, they were delicious. In fact, since we actually did some planning ahead this time around, all the food we had was super good and super filling. Ironically, the only place that seemed a bit sub par was the casino buffet that we got for free.

I could talk a lot more about what all we did in the casino since we spent a disporportional amount of time there. But in the interest of you, the reader, I will move on to our Bourbon street experience. We started out early Saturday morning by missing the Cemetart Tour we were going to go on by 10 minutes due to extreme lolligagging. In light of that, we decided to go to Pat O'Briens to get one of their Hurricane drinks and be entertained by their piano bar. Since I had been there before, I advised everyone to nurse the drink as drinking it too quickly can really mess you up in a hurry. We had a good time there and then went back to the hotel to take a little nap before once again hitting the casino before finally making it back to Bourbon Street later that night.

It should also be mentioned that on the way back to the hotel, prior to our nap, we went to one of the Tropical Isle bars to try some of their ofther drinks (besides a hand grenade). The one I got was called the "Shark Attak" and the picture above is what it looks like. It is not so much what was in the drink that made it good but rather the way it was served to me. I don't want to ruin the surprise for you on that one, you will just have to try it for yourself.

Anyway, so late Saturday night we went back to bourbon street. We saw a sign on one of the bars that said "2 for 1 drinks". So we went in there and naturally ordered doubles of our favorite beverages not knowing that we were really getting double doubles since the drinks were already doubles. That really started the night off on the right track. We then went back to the Tropical Isle from earlier and got a couple Hand Grenades each before being completely done.

We got back at the hotel around 4 in the morning, ate some more Krystal Burgers, and went to sleep with checkout being just 6 hours away. Needless to say, we missed checkout and finally left the hotel around 12:30 for an uneventful ride home. I was so thankful that I finally got a trip to New Orleans with out any kind of catastrophy. Taking back more money than I took there didn't hurt too much either.

Sorry for the long post, but this trip was deserving of it.