Sunday, Jan 9, 2005
Mississippi River; New Orleans, LA; Denver, CO; Reno, NV:
Having packed the night before and given our bags to the ship's crew, we were able to sleep in as late possible, then get up and grab our day-packs as the ship docked. The disembarkment procedure is fairly simple... they call the name of one of the decks at random (or so they said), and when your deck is called, you head down to the lobby on deck 3, and wait in a line to walk off the boat. No sweat. Unfortunately, they called like 4 decks before ours, but we were still off the boat fairly early.
Once we were back into the port (same one we left from) we got to wander through a maze of laid out baggage looking for our bags. You'd think they'd all be near each other, since all of our rooms were close together, but not only was that not the case, my two bags themselves were far apart! So after some digging, Glen found my missing bag, and we bounced for the exit.
Having filled out our customs paperwork the night before, we expected to have to wait in a line, get the paperwork reviewed, and pass a cursory search. Well, we did none of that. As we headed for the exit some port employees just grabbed our papers and let us keep on going for the door. I could have written down "I purchased $10M in Mexican jewelry", signed a fake name, and I don't think anyone would have questioned it.
Once outside the port, we found all the people from the 4 decks that were called before us, all waiting for cabs and busses to the airport. Since we didn't want to try to wait for the bus that we took to get to the port on the 1st day, we just followed Glen's lead and walked up and stood next to the cab line. Like clockwork, the security guard that was there directing traffic yelled at us and made us "get back into line", letting us know that he'd call us for the next cab. And so we pushed ourselves over in front of the cab line (and not a single person said anything!?!) and in about 20 seconds we were called for a cab.
The cab ride was quick (remember Glen only lives a few blocks from the port) but in contrast to the $3 and $4 cab rides in Jamaica and Mexico, this one was like $5
each! Stupid American prices. But it sure beat walking, as a light drizzle was falling.
Back at Glen's house we all cleaned ourselves up a bit, then piled into the Caddy for a ride over to the Garden District. Glen pointed out parts of the Mardi Gras parade route and showed us a bit of the city on the way. Our destination was the Commander's Palace restaurant. Converted from and old-school house to a restaurant in 1880, this place is a kick-ass restaurant with a bunch of history.
Lunch was top-shelf, and the meal ranks in the top 4 for best meals I've ever had (the other 3 were from my last trip to N.O.) I'm seriously jealous that Glen can eat like that whenever he feels like it... 'course if I lived there, I'd turn into a massive fat-ass from all the food.
Back at Glen's after lunch I had enough time to change into some less formal clothes for traveling, burn copies of everyone's digital pictures, and kick it for a few before we were off to the airport. Everyone else was staying for another day, but I had work on Monday, so my flight was leaving Sunday afternoon. Glen let me drive the pimp-ride to the airport. I have to say, for a big car, that thing can move! Plus, you can't beat the interior of a Caddy... it's like the Cadilliac of cars!
My flights went off without a hitch, in contrast to my trip out. I even lucked out and got seats on both flights within the 1st 8 rows, which are the business class seats. I'll tell you, when you're 6'4", an extra few inches of leg room is a *huge* increase in comfort! The only thing that sucked was landing in Reno. It was about 9pm, but the whole city was lit up with light reflecting off the cloud cover and the snow... holy crap the snow! It was piled everywhere, worse than when I left. I later found out that I missed the biggest storm of the year. So, while it was nice laying on the beach while everyone else was getting pummeled by snow, it certainly made coming back home that much harder.
Day 9 Cliff notes:
Disembarked with minimal issues. Took a quick car tour of New Orleans. Ate lunch at Commander's. Had a good flight home, back to Antartica.