Nawlins

In the past few days, I've been in Nawlins (New Orleans) for a conference. I've never visited New Orleans before because I've heard it's humid. Well, having Tokyo still fresh in my system (physically), I have to say that it is TRUE. New Orleans is VERY HUMID. Actually, these few days have been "extra humid" according to the locals. In addition, it thunderstorms every evening, right when I decide to start my walking tour. It stormed so hard yesterday that here is a pic of Bourbon Street.

In addition, I've noticed a few differences (in random order):

1. People are very welcoming - Everyone from the bus driver to servers would say "Welcome to New Orleans, we're glad you came" Wow - perhaps we didn't understand it when most of the people said that to us last year.. .or maybe they never said it at all.

2. Safety - the locals are very kind in telling us "be very careful of your surroundings" and even demonstrate how I should be holding my purse.

3. Streets change names when you cross Canal St. - don't know the story behind it, but our airport shuttle driver mentioned it

The fourth one is very funny to me... I would describe it as "escalator etiquette". There's about 10,000 people attending this conference and all the sessions end around the same time. Even with all this people piling onto the escalator at the same time, I observed a couple of things:

a.) In the escalator line, I had my 24-36" of personal space

b.) Even though you can fit two people on one step, everyone naturally took one whole step
c.) On top of the 'one step per person', people also stood on the opposite end of each step (right, left, right left) to ensure optimum space. Fascinating...