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At 9am was Graceland, the home of Elvis scheduled. We made it almost in time, and the campground is right next to it, 5 minutes to walk.

Stephan, our guide, got a pretty good discount for us, since the admission was pretty expensive (25$/adult). We saw everything what’s there to see and it’s nice to get to know it. Then I was sick of Elvis and happy to get a break of him.

We left Memphis to go to New Orleans , where the whole group was looking forward to.

On the way there I played with the program “Paint Shop Pro 8” to stitch some of my panorama pictures from the “ Great Smoky Mountains ” together to one big panorama picture.

Stephan organized a Hotel right next to the French Quarter instead of the far away located campground. It was the most amazing stay in my whole year in the states. This “Olde Town Inn” is so typical for the southern states and Louisiana and so nice located with extremely nice personnel, there wasn’t anything to complain. It was even cheap.

We went the first night out of two to the real “ Bourbon Street ” of New Orleans and checked out all the bars, clubs and restaurants. The whole group went out for Dinner together and I had “New Orleans B.B.Q. Shrimp”. Hot and great!

My brother and I got to our room by 2am .
The next day was actually planned to do a swamp tour… unfortunately the hurricane “Ivan” messed this plans up.

No time for the laptop at this location.

8 th Day (09/12/2004)

Instead of the swamp tour we went to see the French market and buy Alligator meat (recommended by the staff of the hotel) so we could have Alligator barbecue for dinner, scheduled for 7:30pm .

The French market is a nice and cheap (in comparison to Bourbon Street ) area to buy Souvenirs and Voodoo dolls. The nice lady “Marianne” from the Hotel gave me a Voodoo doll as present in the morning, which I found really nice, just to have one and try it ;o). After that we walked along the shore of the mighty Mississippi River and saw a cool street artist show in front of the St. Louis Cathedral. It started to rain and we went to the Café du Monde do blow powder sugar at each other. It was a big mess and a lot of fun, if you get there: Try it!

Sticky as we where from that just Tabita, Camilla, Pit and I went to go on a boat tour on the mighty Mississippi River with a sternwheeler, of course. It was great, relaxing and a must.

After that we walked a bit through the poor areas of New Orleans , during the day though, so it couldn’t be considered dangerous. We went to dinner. The coal did not work properly, at 9pm we had our first alligator meat. Delicious! Relaxing was the plan for the rest of the night, Marco and Matthias went to “ Bourbon Street ” again.

9 th Day (09/13/2004)

8:15am : I tried to dial in the internet via the phone line of our room, it didn’t work and I didn’t have time to figure out why.

We left at 8:30am , stopped by at several sightseeing points. Those where some famous plantations of Louisiana (we did not go in, no time and too expensive) and Baton Rouge ( Louisiana ’s capital). In Baton Rouge we went on the top of the highest Capitol of the United States of America . We had a really nice view and got back on the road after about 45 Minutes. From the Van we could see the swamps and we drove over the longest bridge of the world, something about 23 Miles long. Later on the trip we stopped by a normal looking visitor center at the border of Texas . Welcome to Texas !!!