In which beignets are (finally) consumed…

After the incredibly stressful beginning to my trip, I thought the best thing to do was to go ahead and relax on a ‘Ghosts stories and Haunted Tales of New Orleans’ tour. So I headed out to meet my friend Lila Dubois, and happened to run into the lovely Rachael Johns, Caitlyn Crewes, and Maisey Yates along the way.

The tour ran out of a pub called ‘Flanagan’s’ on St Phillip Street, and it was run by a company called French Quarter Phantoms. They were great, and I highly recommend them to anyone travelling to the area, looking for the tour. On top of the ghosts and vampires one that we did, they also do a Treme tour, a True Crimes tour, and a daytime  graveyard tour (which I’m thinking of trying to get into this weekend).

New Orleans really brought out the atmosphere for us, as we walked along the streets and learned about charming families such as the LaLauries, who were well-known aristocrats with a dark penchant for performing medical experiments and torture on slaves, the street with three chillingly similar murders, decades apart (bottom line: women on this street – do not marry butchers!), and the mischievous child poltergeists that haunt the Andrew Jackson hotel.

We also saw where Richard Simmons went to school. That was perhaps the most terrifying vision of all.

The tour ended up at an old church, with a very large statue, which cast an even larger shadow, and a tale from New Orleans historic rivalry between the French and the Spanish.

After learning about gruesome experiments, grisly murders, and ghastly people, what’s left to do but go get a bite to eat?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Cafe du Monde:

And these, my friends, are beignets. Or, as we like to call them, OMGNOMNOMNOMNOMs.

Fried sweet dough, tossed in mountains of powdered sugar. What on Earth could possibly be bad? If served with hot chocolate at all diplomatic meetings, I’m sure these little babies could save the world.

Finally, after a very long day, I returned to my hotel to this:

I’m not going to lie – I may have wept tears of joy.

Next up: RT Officially begins!