Day 44, 30th September 2011. Panama Beach - New Orleans, Louisiana

When I woke up I was feeling so much better, so I was happy. We were leaving at 7am this morning because we were on our way to New Orleans. We drove through 4 states today, Florida, Alabama, Missisipi and then into Louisiana. It was about a 7 hour drive, and I slept for quite a bit of it. When I wasn't sleeping I was listening to the Princess and the Frog soundtrack on my iPod because I was excited about going to New Orleans.

We arrived in New Orleans at about 2pm and we were staying in a hotel again, and it was actually the nicest hotel we had stayed in since San Francisco. We checked in and then went down to the pool to do some sunbathing. It was nice to do some relaxing, even though the pool was quite cold.
We met a group of American guys in the pool who were really friendly and kept trying to give everyone drinks. As Gary was the only other boy down there they made him drink some whisky, we went back up to the room soon after before they could get Gary too drunk.

We just lazed about for a few hours in the hotel room, it was really nice to have an air conditioned room to just do nothing in. Then we got ready and went downstairs to meet the group to do a little walking tour of New Orleans. We were staying just at the back of the French Quarter and we had been given strict instructions from the hotel about which areas of the city not to go to. We met the others at 5.30pm and we walked around New Orleans for about an hour taking photos. The city was a bit rough, but there was a really cool atmosphere and there really was jazz music playing everywhere, I really liked it. All the buildings were nice and there was lots of stuff going on in the streets.

We then got some dinner at some restaraunt that I an't remember the name of. Mark ordered an assortment of appetisers for us all to share, one of them was oysters that I didn't try, but everyone else did. Gary hated them.

While we were eating, Mark decided it was appropriate to take people outside one by one to ask them how they thought the trip was going. I don't think this was done fairly because the only people he took the time to talk to were the ones with the 'problems' including me. He asked me how I felt it was going and I told him honestly that I hated one person in the group because they were making the others not want to get to know me, Gary and Kirsty. It was really awkward and I didn't really wanna chat about it with him. He didn't like that we weren't integrating ourselves with the rest of the group but he had to understand that we didn't wanna put ourselves in a situation where we were with people that didn't want to get to know us. I was glad when he finally let it go and I got to go back to the table and forget about it.

I had Jumbalaya with pasta for dinner and it was so good, I really enjoyed it. Gary had steak. We had planned to go out tonight but no one really wanted to so we just went back to the hotel.

We were asleep by 10pm, but I was awoken at 2am by the sound of Gary puking, which lasted pretty much all night. I think it was the combination of the beers and whisky that he had earlier in the day mixed with the oyster, he had never eaten one before and doesn't really eat seafood, and probably never will after that.