The King and I - Memphis to Chicago

A magical train trip to Memphis saw us sail through American towns that immediately a tune to mind – Jackson, Clarksdale, Yazoo City. A sweet New Orleans couple in our carriage were celebrating their 52nd anniversary. The husband told Shaun that the secret to a successful marriage was to choose the right woman. ;)

Graceland – Our first truly American ‘amusement’ park.

Tacky in every way, but I kept picturing The King in each of these rooms.

This is where Elvis ate burgers, shot pool, made love to Priscilla, sat by the pool with a margarita and drank whiskey with his posse in the den. The house itself is not nearly as lavish as you’d expect of a celebrity of his status today, but its 70’s styling and famed shag-pile-walled jungle room are something to behold.

The TV room has three TVs set into the wall so he could watch all news channels, just like he’d heard President Nixon did.

Speaking of amazing 70's styling, the Ike and Tina display at Stax Museum was my favourite. Tina would have looked out of this world in this canary yellow dress and sparkly heels.

Isaac Hayes pimped up Caddy won the prize for extravagence.

Continuing north, we landed in Chicago and soaked up the gothic architecture and art deco stylings.

Imagine Gotham city, then add the most beautiful parks and gardens smack in the centre, a smattering of public street art, and a raised subway that clangs and cranks its way around city blocks and through (yes, through) buildings.

Pictured is the giant silver ‘Bean’ statue that bends and contorts the reflection of the city skyline and its visitors.

By far the highlight of Chicago was a baseball match at Wrigley Field where we witnessed the Cubs get whooped by the Florida Gators. We ate giant pretzels and chicago dogs and sang 'Take me out to the ball game' in the ‘seventh stretch’ with the 10,000 strong crowd.

Chicago dogs and Chicago deep-dish pizza were the local snacks, so who were we to argue? A Chicago dog ‘dragged through the garden’ is a hot dog with pickle, mustard, lettuce, cheese, wedges of tomato… everything except ketchup. The deep dish pizza has a base like a pie with raised edges so they can fill the whole thing with cheese. It’s like cutting into a big molten cheese pie – I wasn't sold.

And here’s one more thing I didn’t know… Chicago has an amazing beach right on the city edge. A ‘beach’ beach – sand, little waves, beach volleyball, ice cream vendors and all the beautiful bodies to go with it). It’s fresh water, of course, edging Lake Michigan (a sea-sized lake the size of the state of Virgina).

We couchsurfed in a creaky old apartment with a great verandah looking out over Little Italy, with a sweet medical student called Will.

Will was great, though his bizarre eating habits were somewhat disturbing. He intends to start a obesity clinic which preaches an even more extreme version of the Atkins diet. Will believes humans can eat as much fat as we want and don’t need to exercise unless we eat carbohydrates. I watched him fry up bacon and scrape the fat off the pan to smear back on the rashers. He has bottles of coconut oil lining his shelves which he pours on his steaks and salmon because he doesn’t think they’re fatty enough. Only in America.

The Swamp people - Louisiana and Mississippi

We drove up through Baton Rouge and through the bayous of Louisiana to Lafayette. Henderson is a little town just outside of Lafayette set right in the swamp. This is Cajun country where gators rule the bayous and the washboard and piano accordion meld in zydeco music.

There are a about half a dozen little shacks set along the Henderson swamp that serve up beer and big old plates of boiled crawfish, and act as landings for air boats and motor boats.

It was easy to spend a couple of hours sitting on the porch at McGee’s Landing looking over the water and chatting with the locals, all of whom are fascinated to meet a real ‘Oss-stray-lin’. Upon learning where we were from, one guy said he’d had a friend who went to Australia.

“Really liked it, too. He was shootin’ heaps of stuff and sendin’ me pictures ‘n all,” he said.

Shaun is doing all the driving, and getting used to the right-hand drive, though as this photo depicts, sometimes we still get it a bit wrong. Like that Sesame Street song, “One of these things is not like the others…”

We travelled inland along Hwy 61, the Blues Highway, crossing the border to Mississippi and heading to Natchez.

The change from Louisiana to Mississippi was remarkable. Across the border we encountered a much lusher, greener state, American flags hung from every surface and picture-perfect wooden churches dotted along the way.

The grand, column-fronted antebellum (pre-civil war) homes dotted around this area make me want to don a hoop skirt, sit on a rocking chair on the veranda and drink a mint julep. They are straight out of Gone With the Wind.

We spent an hilarious evening at the Natchez Saloon Under the Hill, which sits up on the hill by the Mississippi River where the majestic old steamboats used to pull up and deliver their goods to the merchants. The Saloon is managed by a cheeky old man called JD and live music most nights which even the local mutts enjoy.

Here’s me hamming it up with JD behind the bar. He looks like a little leprechaun.

In Natchez we stayed in a cabin in the State Park, right on the lake. It was like the Griswald’s summer vacation. We saw deer, armadillo, vultures and fireflies.

Special mention goes to the 'Family Dollar' and 'Piggly Wiggly', two entertainingly named, American be-flagged supermarket chains that sell not a lot of fresh anything, and a whole lot of pre-packaged everything to keep us fuelled.

They do sell about a thousand varieties of grits, though!

Big thumbs down to the ‘Imitation cheese slices’ that we picked up, having been blinded by the $1.50 price tag. Those nasty plastic slices were left to die a slow death of 2000 years in the fridge in the cabin.

Big thumbs up to this souped up Caddy that we spotted in the Family Dollar car park. Can you believe those tyres? The family who were driving it couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

I bought the most beautiful, hand-crocheted dress from a vintage shop in Natchez. The woman found it in the attic of an antebellum home in Touloula. It was found with a cream tuxedo jacket and pants, and satin shoes and they suspect that the two garments were worn by a bride and groom sometime in the 1920’s.

Week 1 : The Big Easy

New Orleans is known by many names - 'The City that Care Forgot', 'Nawlins', 'The Big Easy', NOLA.

We're getting to know it as the place we started our epic honeymoon road trip across the USA and Canada.

We arrived here on Tuesday 14th June to be greeted by a steamy sultry crazy party town - a French infused town on the edge of the Mississippi where bars never close, music is a religion and people prey at the altar of the deep fryer.

The first glimpse of the Mississippi is one I'll remember forever - for it's pure grottiness combined with the memory of every book, song and film that features its waters.

In the Bywater
We've been staying in the Bywater, a super-hip part of town just out of the French Quarter where street art adorns the brightly painted shotgun houses (shotguns are similar in style to a terrace house in Melbourne).

The pink house second on the right in this photo is the one we're staying in.

One house nearby is entirely painted in chalkboard paint and has the words 'Before I die I want to...' painted repeatedly up and down the wall, each with a space for passerbys to chalk in their bucket list goal.
I'm not sure what kind of face I'm pulling here, but I'm pointing at "Before I die I want to... rule the world".

A freight train line runs through the Bywater and we're regularly warned not to cross over to the wrong side of the tracks at night. As one local put it "they shoot each other with amazing regularity in those parts." How seriously to take these warnings I don't know. We have to cross the tracks to get to our house, so we hope that our Australian accent gets us out of any trouble.

The Treme

After having watched the HBO series Treme
we were so excited about visiting the neighbourhood's namesake, and we had the chance on Juneteenth, a national day that recognises the abolition of slavery. We celebrated with the Treme locals, kicking back under a little marquee with some 'fruit cocktail' (fluorescent red cordial to the uninitiated) and an amazing performance from the Treme Brass Band. This band is legendary, and the enigmatic 90+ year old Uncle Lionel Batiste who plays bass drum is one of the reasons why. He is one cool cat. You can see him second from the right in this photo.

A visit to the oldest cemetery in New Orleans had us stumble upon the gravesite of a much-respected old voodoo woman.
A procession of followers have left an assortment of gifts and keepsakes at her grave over the years, including combs, candies, ribbons, bottles of liquor and condoms, as well as leaving the voodoo mark of 'XXX' chalked all over the site.

Eating soul
How I've managed to get this far in the post without mentioning the food is beyond me. We went through our photos so far and at least every second one features us eating. I think that luggage weight will be the least of our worries!

We were staying with a New York food blogger for a couple of days who pointed us in the direction of some of the city's most awesome soul food.

Gumbo, grits, boiled crawfish, shrimp, catfish, collard greens, red beans and rice - I've eaten nothing like it.

A most memorable meal was Shaun's very first boudin sandwich.
Boudin is a sausage made with several types of cooked meat mixed with rice. Here's Shaun ho-ing into his boudin, which came complete with a fried egg, mustard and rasher of bacon. For a vegetarian, he has taken to this meat-eating stuff like a pro.

I've been making a decent go of it, too. Here I am tucking into a muffeletta from the legendary Corner Grocery Store - imagine the entire contents of an Italian deli piled onto a roll and you've got the idea. Ham, salami, prosciutto, mortadella, mozzarella. The olives are the only green component.

And here's the lovely Shaun demolishing our very first po boy - a baguette sandwich which usually has shrimp, sausage or catfish - this one is catfish.

While we're talking food, why the hell hasn't some enterprising young hipster in Melbourne started doing this outside pubs in Melbourne? Forget the kebab, people, a huge slice of pepperoni pizza that you fold in two and load into your mouth in four easy bites is the way to go.

The French architecture is stunning, and walking the backstreets is a rewarding, if sweaty, experience.

It's hard to believe that this is the same city that in 2005 was TV news fodder for weeks following Katrina. Driving past the Superdome is a pretty sobering experience - I don't remember how many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people took refuge in there. There are a number of houses that are still boarded up even 6 years after the storm.

New Orleans music
We quickly learnt that Bourbon St was the equivalent of Kings Cross - a big, dirty, neon-lit stretch of karaoke bars and strip clubs and 3-for-1 drinks.
This photo taken on Bourbon says it all. If you can't read that sign, it says 'Huge Ass Beers'.

Much of the great music is on Frenchman's Street, where we saw an awesome 7-piece bluegrass fused jazz band called The Dirty Bourbon Boys at The Maison, and a classic country rock dude called Grayson Kapps (as if he could have grown up to be anything else??) at d.b.a.

What's astonishing is how a musician makes a living in this town. There is bar after bar of incredibly good music, the vast majority of which have no cover charge and bands rely on a tip jar that goes around the audience. We've been told that many of the bands don't even get a guarantee. The bars will tip your drink into a plastic cup if you are ready to move on but haven't finished your drink.

We visited the awesome local radio station 91.5 WWOZ and met the staff and volunteers, including the ghost presenter who wouldn't let us take a photo of him because it would be betray his anonymity.

Black Indians
We went to a concert in the park in the warehouse district where we saw this awesome black Indian chief funkin' it up with the band.

During times of slavery, runaway slaves often sought refuge with the Indians, and many were given honorary titles. The black Indian tradition still lives strong today.

We took this picture at the Backstreet Cultural Museum of one of the spectacular Indian suits that are worn during special parades.