zimmers in texas

Well we have been a bit slack with writing in our blog but this is the latest update.
I have found a yoga group and am really enjoying that and also a great massuesse. Glenn has had the first experience with health system as he has had to visit the dentist. Amazingly all went well. We still cant get the bank sorted out, they have sent us a letter asking why we have given an American address for our bank account and now they have sent us an overdrawn notice for a non existent account. This has got to be a record for getting things wrong, not even Telstra is this bad.
We finally got to see the Leonard Cohen movie, I'm Your Man and it was really good.
Last weekend we went to New Orleans and it was a fantastic weekend. All the flights were delayed but not to cause any great upset. The boarding system is quite complex and even though the flights are scheduled for a certain time, down to the minute, it always takes twice as long as expected to board so they all run late and then make up time in flight. This has happened on the whole domestic flights. All the passengers take on heaps of carryon luggage and then get annoyed when it wont fit into the overhead lockers. Anyway on to Nawlins. We caught a flight at about 7pm and had to change at Houston. We arrived at NO at about 1opm and caught a taxi to the hotel. The taxi driver told us that prior to Katrina there was about 750,000 people there but only about 200,000 have returned. The hotel was lovely with floor to ceiling windows overlooking Canal St. This street runs down to the Mississippi and we walked down there for breakfast on Sat morning. We had beignets for breakfast which are essentially hot fried donuts in icing sugar. They were delicious!!! We sat in a large cafe as a trumpet player serenaded everyone. Everywhere you turned there was music and it was all good.
On Saturday afternoon we took a "Katrina" tour and it is impossible to describe the devestation and the lack of any great rebuilding. There would be odd houses in the streets that had cleaned up and moved back in but they were surrounded by houses that hadn't been touched. You could see the mould on the walls inside. Piles of rubbish outside the houses indicated that people were starting to clean them out to either sell or renovate but there were not many like this. People have till 29th Aug to decide what they are going to do but a lot don't have insurance and even if they did it doesnt cover the cost. There are still lots of caravans being used as temporary accomodation but these would need to be evacuated if there was even a low category hurricane. It was all rather sad to see the complete waste. The French Quarter is in the higher part of New Orleans and escaped a lot of damage.
Saturday night we went out to dinner at a lovely French restaurant and then headed up to Bourbon Street. The food is an amazing mixture of French, Spanish and American. It is mostly delicious and nice to choose things that are not deep fried (except for the Beignets).
Bourbon Street was magic, it was like a big party all night. The street is blocked off so people can walk up and down from bar to bar. You are allowed to drink in the street but not be drunk in the street. That hardly works!! We tried the local favourite drinks, a Hurricane and a Mint Julep. Another popular drink was the hand grenade and people were wandering the streets with grenade shaped glasses drinking this potent looking green drink.
There are voodoo shops everywhere so I had to buy a voodoo doll which can be used for good as well as evil. The graveyards are another tourist attraction because they all have to be above the ground as New Orleans is essentially below sea level.
There were police everywhere and we were deafened with the constant noise of sirens. It seems crime is quite high and it is the murder capital of America. There were 6 murders on Sat night and we think we were pretty close to one as about 10 police cars descened on Canal street and arrested a young kid, just as we were walking back to the hotel.
On Sunday morning we went for another walk along Bourbon st and it was just like the aftermath of a big party with glasses and rubbish lining the streets but no bodies. The pubs were open for business all over again. We went for a cable car ride to the French Market which was just another flea market and then we stopped to have a drink and a last listen to some jazz before we came back to Austin.
I got a parcel of magazines from Australia today so I off to read these- see ya.

gz - sorry but having problem getting pics in this one . Will add to next post