Spring Break or Bust

You might be asking yourself, "What? Katie Shropshire exists? I thought she was just some phantom blogger who only occasionally will grace us with some classroom tale," but I am here today to tell not of a classroom tale, but to tell of my Spring Break.

Spring Break should be a magical time. A time of rest, relaxation, doing the things you love that are fun. Should be. I will say that I did have a most enjoyable Spring Break. I did not do much, which was awesome, and I got to see some friends I haven't seen in forever, ate at Butches and Mellow, and even venture to Mobile's very own Crescent Theater. If you don't know what it is, go out and support it, at least once. It's this little theater on LoDa (that's Lower Dauphin Street for those who did not sport the bumper sticker on their car in high school or weren't privy to taking a Mobile History Class where every Thursday we took a "field trip" to LoDa and got to get Krispy Kreme doughnuts on the way home. Ah, that life) that plays small independent films. The guy who owns it really loves movies. And I mean really loves movies. He tried to let us borrow his Swedish vampire movie DVD and said "Come back in a couple of days and I'll let you guys borrow it! It's great!" Maybe next time, Movie Guy; but I digress.

For the past couple of months I have been dying to do 3 things: 1-Go to the Audobon Aquarium of the Americas. 2-Go to the Audobon Zoo. 3-Eat some delish beignets. Where's the one place that houses all 3 of these exciting events? Why none other than the soup bowl city itself, our neighbor to the west, the place that stole Mardi Gras and "did it right," a little place I like to call New Orleans, or NOLA. My family has always loved to do these three things, so it came as no surprise to me that my sister Amber immediately was on board with hitting up these three lovely hot spots with me. We decided that the last Saturday of my Spring Break we would make the journey over to NOLA. We were so excited. Giant Sharks, Jelly Fish, Arangatuns, fabulous French doughnuts, what more could two you girls ask for? Let me tell you friends, nothing, that's what. And we didn't get any of those things. Allow me to explain.

To say we didn't get any of those is a bit dramatic. As I explain the story, let's see if you can figure out which of those things we did get. Did I just go 1st grade on you guys? My bad. We arose at 7:45 am that Saturday morning to begin our treck to New Orleans. Just a couple of modern day explorers; a regular Lewis and Clarke tale, if you will (and you will). We got ready, said bye to my mother and were off on our adventure by 8:45. We even stopped to get some Chick-Fil-A for breakfast which everyone knows is my fav. The day was off to a great start...until we hit traffic. One of the biggest questions I have had recently is the existence of highway construction. What purpose does it serve but to make all impatient drivers angry, irrate, and irritated. It never ever seems to get done. Point in case--just HOW LONG has Montgomery been trying to improve their I-65/85 junction? TOO LONG, I tell you. But anyway, yes, we hit traffic. On I-10. 30 minutes away from our destination. We sat. We waited. We watched as people continued to be ignorant of the concept of merging. We watched a woman almost get rammed in the arse of her car because she refused to move. She was just SITTING THERE. Why, we are still not sure, but this left us with a good 15 minutes of banter back and forth on why that woman sucks so much. But we didn't let this get us down. We cranked up the tunes even louder and just sang our little hearts out. I mean, don't tell us not to live...lifes candy and the suns a ball of butter, DON'T bring around the clouds to rain on OUR parade...woooah. But anyway, this little traffic jam, got more cars than a beach got sand, but us an hour pack in our regularly scheduled plan, but again, we were determined to persevre.

We finally made it to New Orleans. Amber and I were admiring all the rubble and mess that still exists from the hurricane, giving our less than 2 cents opinion on what the government should do to clean it up and rid that area of infection, disease, rats, and roaches, when we realized we might have missed our exit. This was after our father's warning on how not to get lost, pay attention, and we miss our exit. After several exits and enterances and explaining to Amber AGAIN that "Exit Only" does not mean you can't get back on the exit, we finally made it to the Aquarium. This little detour added an extra 30 minutes on to our all ready late arrival. No matter. We were there. We got to the Aquarium, purchased our "Audobon Experience" passes (you get into the zoo, aquarium, IMAX, and the insecturarium for the low price of $32.95) and hit the trail on our wildlife adventure. We made our way through the aquarium, only to remember that it is not actually as good as we remembered. There were too many people everywhere, especially small children, and we kept feeling like we had to get out of the way for them to see, but then were torn because we also paid good money to see the penguins and the otters too. There was also this giant lady in a wheel chair who kept blocking all the sea horse tanks. It's like she was reading our minds and thought "This is the tank you want to go see? Well, I'm going to park my giant motorized Rascal infront of it for 5-10 minutes until you become frustrated and walk off at which time I will follow, and beat you, to your next location." So the aquarium was not so awesome. No matter. On to bigger and better things. Beignets.

We went to the Cafe Du Monde in the Riverwalk because we didn't want to get caught up in the Jackson Square hullabuloo. As responsible and well raised children, we know it's important to eat a well balanced meal before eating deserts, so we went to grab a bite in the food court. Let it be said, the food in the food court sucks. Gross chicken, gross french fries, gross everything, but we ate it anyway. I even saved plenty of room for the light and fluffy scrumtrilescent treat. We make our way to the cafe, stand in line, discuss how excited we are to eat beignets, how we need to get an order to bring home to Mom, when our dreams come crashing and burning before our very eyes. A sign that read "Cash Only. No checks or cards." was posted right at the ordering end of the counter. I thought this must be a mistake; it must be outdated, but as I looked around I realized the signs were EVERYWHERE. Ok, not everywhere, but there was one more posted at the cash register. Well, we didn't have any cash and didn't see a nearby ATM, so we sadly stepped out of line. We quickly came to the conclusion that we would just walk down to Jackson Square, that certainly that location would accept debit cards. After all, this is 2009, not 1909. Well, we were wrong. They didn't. Not to mention the line at the original Cafe Du Monde was OUT OF CONTROL. Sadly and slowly, we tredged back to our car. It was now 4:00. Amber had an epiphone. Or actually a realization. The zoo closes at 5. We thought it couldn't be true. She also remembered, after telling me she DID KNOW, that she actually did NOT know how to get to the zoo from the aquarium. We called the Mom who had to navigate us as we wandered up and down Canal, finally making the several turnoffs we need to find and made it to the zoo...at 4:45. There were tons of people around so we though, maybe we were wrong, maybe the zoo DOESN'T close at 5. WRONG. It does.

We got in the car and made the trip back home. Amber remarked that she wanted to take her zoo ticket and "pee all on it then throw it out the window because that's what I did with my money." I decided since I did not get a beignet that I would, in fact, need ice cream. We stopped at Dairy Queen in some po-dunk town. We also noticed a giant white castle that SOMEONE had built to live in along the coastline. This provided us with a good 20 minutes of back and forth jokes in regards to the matter, that included "Just take a left at the Castle and you'll be there. If you pass the Castle, you've gone too far." We were able to laugh off the situation because that's what Amber and I do. Had it been anyone else, they might have cried or yelled for hours, but we just laughed, ate a Blizzard, tried not to the laugh at the drive-thru worker with the severe r-control problem, and throw our Blizzards at the large group of antique car owners who decided to have a car show in the parking lot. All in all, it was a crappy trip, but at least it provided me with a good story, and now took away 20 minutes of your life.