cellboy

I will try to keep it short so here it goes
1. Up early at 4 am, to finish last minute stuff before meeting Mark and Ho for our morning flight. All went smoothly. We flew to Dallas, then to New Orleans

2. We all stayed at the Iberville Suites. Part of and connected to the Ritz Carlton. Some of the Iberville was in construction remodeling, so we had to take a maze of elevators, and hallways, of the Ritz to get to our rooms. Oddly it was more confusing sober than tipsy! LOL
But nice thing is Lee and Tom discovered the 4th floor free Brunch at the Ritz. Very nice. And since we are somewhat under the same management, we were very welcome there :)

3. Forgetting that bars and restaurants are open 3-4 hrs later than in California, made the trip one of exhaustion these first few days.

4. All the bars of course have the Male Strippers/Dancers. Ho and I were so excited this first time out, and taking so many photos (and flirting), I either dropped my phone at this point (or fell out of my pocket while dancing), or left it on the bar, only to notice after returning to the hotel with Mark, I had lost it. That phone is my work! So much stuff in it! After calling and calling, a bartender pick up the call. It was at Lafitte's. So I meandered back to the bar, to retrieve it. Ho was still there, so I stayed awhile. Ho and I got home at 5:30 am! We had about 4 hrs total sleep since Friday! OY! Nice thing is that we were able to eat well at that hr. There was a great Po Boy sandwich place across from Lafitte. Best fries ever!

5. Saturday, was sleep in time, but we all managed to do a lot of walking that week. Out late of night of course, and eating in some cool places. YUM!!! THAT SOUTHERN FOOD!

6. The weather was great the whole trip. But getting used to the humidity is not easy. Mark was good, and so were Tom and Lee. They went to the hotel gym most of the week. I only went twice in Key West.

7. As for Southern Decadence, it was actually pretty nice. The parade was pretty lame, partly due to the storm the previous week. But as for crowded? It wasn't. No long lines to the bars. Not uncomfortably packed streets. Many canceled their trip, maybe too early, due to Hurricane Issac. Glad we didn't. We ran into many from SF though. And met some new friends too!

8. Later that week, after Decadence, we went on the Swamp Boat Cruise outside of NOLY. It was really good. Much had changed quite a bit since Hurricane Issac had passed though the week before. Salt water from the gulf and pushed it's way up the swamp tributaries, causing the lily pads and many plants to die, may of the trees in the swamp to start loosing there leaves early (an early fall look). Usually there are as many as 20 Alligators in groups along the bank. This time you would only see one or two every so many miles. They are still confused by the change that the hurricane caused the previous week.
Also there was quite a bit of dock, and boat wreckage along the shore. Some of it caused by Hurricane Katrina, 7 yrs earlier! FEMA had still not managed to get to it, to clean it up.

8. One nice thing about the cruise was meeting two hot men from London. Marc and Luca. They are on a 3 week vacation, touring the US. They planned to be in California next week, at Yosemite, then Napa, then SF on Folsom weekend. Well almost. They did not know about Folsom. They fly out Saturday morning for London. But we hope to meet up Thursday or Friday for drinks. We did get to go out with them later that night, after the Swamp Cruise, to friend John Weber's Birthday, at Cochon then to Bourbon Street later on.

9. We really did not see too much damage. Saw a few damaged buildings along the highways. The lady across the hall in our hotel had lost her home. And I asked various people that worked at the hotel what they had been through. Most said power outages only. One lady however said the water around her home rose up to about 4 ft. She said the sad thing was the neighbors left there pets tied up to the fence. They drowned. How sad :(

10. Wednesday, we were off to Key West. The purpose of the trip was to give ourselves a rest after New Orleans. Our little house was great. Each of us got a room. There was a small pool in the back. And we were a short distance from the gay section. We relaxed. We rented bikes for 3 days and biked all over (its a bike town). Of course we went out for dinner at night, and did the bars.

11. One highlight was the Key West Butterfly Conservatory. Newly met friend from Malepits, on Facebook, Kirk Zimmerman (WOOF!) works there, and gave us a free tour of the amazing conservatory. He was pretty busy that week, but we did manage to go out with he and his partner Kevin the last night of our trip. We had a great time!

12. While in Key West I did manage to go to the gym. And of our group of three, managed to get somewhat a bit "Lucky". But that's saved for another post ;)

The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France is the oldest Catholic cathedral in continual use in the United States.

Tom, Lee, Mark

Our group with Gary Virgina (front)

Go go guy at Bourbon Street Bar

We wore our SF matching shirts first night out

Bourbon Street, Southern Decadence Saturday

Tom and Lee decided to kiss in front of the Anti-Gay Christian protesters. After, Tom went up to one of them and said "Bet your penis is small". Oy

The parade this year was disappointing

John (l), Paul(r) and two others also from SF, are Rosie the Riveter. Tom is in the middle

Ho started misbehaving at OZ. Then he fell in love

He fell in love with Seth. His future husband, says Ho. Then I say to Ho, since I seem to attract married men, then he will be my BF. LOL

Seth has a really hard butt and legs! Confidently, Kirk, who I meet in Key West the next week, knows Seth. Had had Seth and his BF stay with them many a time. Small world!