New Orleans, LA

Nikki again, straight from I-85N, two hours outside of Athens, GA where we’re headed for New Years Eve. This eight hour drive has been broken up by a stop at both Sonic and KFC, so needless to say, we’re still full. Our long stint in New Orleans was everything we hoped it would be and more!

We arrived on the 29^th around 5 and settled into Morgan’s Tulane apartment (thanks again, Moe!) after our longest drive of the trip. We switched out of sweatpants and into more presentable clothes, and waited for my friend Rachel (we met in Sydney, she lives 2.5 hours outside of NOLA, hi Rach!) to pick us up. We drove down to the French Quarter and waited in a relatively long line for a delicious place recommended to us called the Gumbo Shop. It was, in fact, quite delicious, and a conversation was had regarding me bathing in said Gumbo. Linds got crawfish ettoufee and Rachel got red beans & rice. We fit in so well here. After dindin, we walked all around the Quarter and saw a long line at the 24-hour Café du Monde, multiple voodoo/tarot card/palm reading tables, and most importantly, a bustling Bourbon Street, even on a Sunday night. The Saint’s had just won a game and tourists and locals alike were celebrating properly. After grabbing a hot chocolate and baileys from a very peculiar bar called Nepoleons Itch (‘nuff said), we strolled along the street weaving in and out of drunken fools and laughing at overhead conversations. We spent a good chunk of time in the Quarter and eventually made it back to the apartment in one piece.

Rise and Shine was at 9am. We made it back to Café du Monde just in time to get the perfect spot in the enormous line. Luckily, that place is huge and the line moves relatively quickly. Also, luckily, street performers were there to entertain and keep our minds off the fact that we were not yet stuffing our faces with fried dough covered in powdered sugar. But don't worry. That time came. And it was glorious. Lindsey and I were modest and split three between the two of us. We washed it down with café au lait and hot chocolate, gave our seats up to the next group of hungry tourists, and began our daylight stroll back around the French Quarter. The artists had their art hung up all around Jackson Square and we stopped to look at everything. We must have gone into quite literally every boutique and art gallery, buying a few goodies here and there. The next time we looked at our clocks, it was 2pm and we had no idea where the morning had gone. We decided 2pm was a good time to eat again, so we got back to the car and drove to our predetermined lunch spot.

This spot is called Parkway Bakery & Tavern, and is the place where the Obama’s get their po’boys in NOLA, so it made the most sense that we do it as well. In addition to free parking, this place had the most fantastic golden fried shrimp po’boy I’ve ever had, and I think I maybe have had a bite of one before in my 21 years of life. No but really, it was awesome and messy and everything I dreamed it would be the night before. We left Parkway happy and full, so everything went as planned. We drove from there to Magazine street which is the cutest little street that took a minimum of $150 from our wallets in the form of unnecessary additions to our closets. It was great. After robbing us of our life savings, we decided to go to Oak street where we were told there was more to buy. Fortunately/Unfortunately, we didn’t find Oak street as charming, as there was less to spend our money on. We decided, if theres nothing here to buy to put on the outside of our bodies, we might as well sit down somewhere and buy something to put inside of them. So, that’s exactly what we did.

We found Camillia Grill, a diner with a single counter that snakes through the entire restaurant, and ordered Gumbo, a Cheeseburger, and fried mac & cheese bites, because Morgan suggested them and it didn't matter that we still weren’t hungry. Something to note is that we were at a diner and didn't order milkshakes because we have self control sometimes, okay?! We finished our grease bowls and then, because it was not even 8pm, decided it was the right time to start our night on Bourbon. Whats kewl about NOLA is that its never too early OR too late to start having a good time in the Quarter. Linds started her night off with a ‘Hurricane’ Daiquiri (cherry/fruit punchy/alcoholy) and got it to go in a *~classy~* Styrofoam cup for easy sippage while walking around. I found a ‘to-go’ window, and grabbed a ‘Hand Grenade’ (appley/alcoholy) for the road! (walking, of course) It was then that I decided ‘To-Go’ Windows in New Orleans are God’s way of picking favorites and declaring that NOLA is the winner of all cities. (COME ON BOSTON, STEP UP YOUR GAME!) The rest of the night consisted of waltzing in and out of various jazz bars listening to random bands play random songs for random strangers. We shook our groove thangs and had a great time with our plastic & Styrofoam to-go cups. You also need to know that we got Mardi Gras beads, but you don't need to know what we had to do to get them…

By the end of the night, we were pretty much ‘Nawlin-ers and, in my opinion, you couldn't tell us apart from the locals. We had a lovely seat on a bench overlooking the MIGHTY MISSISSIPI RIVER and pondered life. After the 3 seconds of life pondering, we sang songs from our 5^th grade choirs. This concluded the night before we headed back to the apartment.

We hopped in the car this morning before 10am and got on the road towards UGA, where we will celebrate 2014 in style at our friends frat house. YAY!

Talk to ya next year, followers!

*drops mic*

Here's our vlog!

Atlanta, GA

This is Lindsey reporting live from I-65S. We are headed to New Orleans and making great time. We also changed time zones and gained an hour which was pretty cool! Atlanta was a ton of rainy fun. It rained from the minute we got there until the minute we fell asleep (at the extremely late hour of 11pm) so we opted for indoor activities, which is something we haven’t done much of on this trip…unless you consider eating an indoor activity, in which case we should have won a gold medal by now and are assuming our award got lost in the mail since no one really knows where we are at any given time.

On the way to Atlanta, after realizing we were driving straight into rain, we brainstormed a list of things to do that would keep us dry and entertained. Options included eating, shopping, visiting the aquarium, or spending a couple hours at the World of Coca Cola. Shopping was nixed right away because neither of us are positive we’re 100% female and we were still full from breakfast so eating was quickly decided against. After weighing the pros and cons of the aquarium vs. coke we decided that there was no guarantee we’d stay dry at the aquarium (hi splash zone) and we didn’t want to spend a small fortune to look at fish all day, so we bought tickets to the 5pm tour at the coke factory and prepared ourselves for an exciting afternoon of carbonated beverages and lots of burping. We made great time on the road and even called the coke factory to switch to an earlier tour, but the joke was on us when we showed up ready to drink our weight in bubbly goodness and instead had to wait an entire hour in a line that extended around the side of the building. Not cool coke world! Luckily, we were able to stay entertained by multiple cute babies in line ahead of us. There was also a screen showing Coke commercials from around the world, but after watching the same five commercials three times in a row we quickly lost interest. If any of you know the president of the World of Coca Cola please direct him to this blog so he can read our suggestions – play more commercials and install more than one single metal detector. Your line is boring to wait in and takes forever to get through.

After Nikki picked off most of her nail polish and I fell asleep standing up multiple times, we finally made it inside! Our first order of business was the bathroom. Mr. President, if you’re still reading this here’s another suggestion – your lobby bathroom needs more than three stalls. I don’t know what women do in the bathroom because, like I said, my gender is sometimes questionable, but I do know that they take a long freaking time and waiting in line to pee really sucks.

We were quickly welcomed into the ~*Coca Cola Loft*~ (aka “a room full of old Coke memorabilia from the 1900s and Korea” as described by Nikki) and listened to some lady named Cookie talk about the history of the company for approximately 30 seconds before we got bored and stopped listening / started texting. Luckily, that didn't last too long and we were moved into a movie theater where we watched the NEW Coca Cola polar bears movie. We were excited and thought this was a pre-screening for a new full-length film, but it turned out to be a five minute short that you can watch for free online. We do recommend watching it, but we don’t recommend traveling all the way to Atlanta to watch it on a bigger screen than your laptop. After the movie we were released into the rest of the exhibits like a pack of shoppers on black Friday. I kid you not, I’m almost positive someone got trampled. I guess people really want to take pictures with the scary polar bear and will stop at nothing to achieve this goal.

We opted out of picture taking and instead went straight to the vault where the super secret Coca Cola formula is allegedly locked. I for one think that’s a load of crap and they just use this to attract sorry saps to their exhibit, but while there we figured we might as well check it out. The vault was exactly what you’d expect it to be – a fake looking safe with a hand scanner and keypad. Not a chance that something as sacred as the formula is locked there. I’d be surprised if the vault even opened at all. If anything  is locked in there, it’s probably the bodies of past Coca Cola workers who have disclosed the formula to their friends.

After the vault we walked through a couple exhibits that had cool historical artifacts (shout out to the American Idol 2004 red room couch. We sat on it and I sang Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment Like This in my head while subconsciously pretending to be interviewed by Ryan Seacrest) and then made our way to a 4D movie extravaganza. The 4D movie was everything you’d expect it to be, and we got splashed with water on three separate occasions because for some reason that’s the only trick 4D movie producers know how to use. We also got stung by virtual bees which kind of hurt and I for one will never be returning to this movie theater. At this point we decided we probably should have opted for the aquarium, because at least they give you ponchos in the splash zone.

Finally, the moment none of you have been waiting for – THE COCA COLA SAMPLING ROOM aka a room with 60 different Coke products from around the world. We sampled approximately 52.5 (one was so bad we had to spit it out) and even got to try Coke’s new holiday gingerbread soda that is ~*exclusive*~ to Coca Cola World visitors. We signed waivers and are not at liberty to disclose information about the soda, but it was delicious and you missed out by not joining us in Atlanta. Just kidding about the waivers and the delicious soda – it was kind of bad and Nikki spilled hers out in the trash after one sip.

After filling up on soda, we grabbed our free collector Coke bottles, hit the gift shop, bought way too much tacky shit, and made our way to dinner at Richard Blais’ Flip Burger Boutique. For those of you who have lives and don’t spend time watching bad TV, Richard Blais was a contestant on Top Chef. I for one love that show and was especially excited to dine at his restaurant, and Nikki says, “I don’t watch it because it’s not on Food Network and I don’t know any other channel numbers, if we’re being honest, but I’m sure if I could figure out what channel it was on I would like it.” On the show Richard’s thing was using liquid nitrogen for ice cream. I almost failed the one semester of chemistry I took so I’m not sure exactly what this means, but we ordered Krispy Kreme and burnt marshmallow Nutella liquid nitrogen milkshakes and they were delicious. Nikki was specifically instructed to wait until hers stopped smoking before she could drink it. Again, no idea what the science behind this is but I’m thankful she waited because I do not want to know what those consequences would be. I ordered a standard cheeseburger complete with swiss cheese, pickled onions, lettuce, tomato, and something called B&B pickles (which I later learned stands for bread and butter but that doesn’t matter because I don’t eat pickles and took them off as soon as my burger arrived). Nikki ordered a slider trio with fried chicken, beef, and brisket sliders. “I can’t pick a favorite. It’s like picking a favorite child,” she says, although I suspect that every parent secretly has a favorite child and thus Nikki must have a favorite slider. We also ordered a side sampler consisting of onion rings, fries, and sweet potato tots. I for one would like to pick a least favorite child, as the sweet potato tots did not do it for me and we only ate a few of them. Another quality quote from Nikki: “I would have eaten them but the shake did me in….as did the fries and the onion rings and the three burgers”. Overall, it was a great meal and we left the restaurant swearing we would never eat again.

Luckily, that changed when our lovely host, Melissa (hi Melissa hope you’re reading this!) took us to Bagelicious this morning. We’ve been eating a lot of heavy breakfasts on this trip, so bagels were a nice change of pace. Nikki got an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox, and I got an onion bagel with something called “sclox” spread. It was supposed to be scallions and lox spread but I’m pretty sure it was just scallion cream cheese with some pink food dye in it because there’s not a chance salmon was mixed into it. Regardless, it was a great breakfast and the perfect thing to tie us over until snack time which ended up being cookies purchased and eaten 30 seconds after we left the restaurant.

We are now two hours away from New Orleans and can’t wait to see what the city has in store for us. I suspect a lot of good food, but when has that never not been the case on this trip?

*drops mic*

 (please note: there is no picture of us outside of Flip due to the fact that it was pouring and we did not want to ruin our phones and our dignity trying to take a selfie in the rain)

Vlog vlog vlog vlog vlog:

Savannah, GA

HELLO! Nikki here, live from the passenger seat on 16-W, on our way to the ATL! We had a deliciously fun time in Savannah – here’s what happened:

It didn’t take us too long to get to Savannah from Charleston, but we did make a quick pit stop at the Carolina Cider Company (really just a small shack filled with pies, sauces and cider) on the side of what we remember to be 17S. Here, we bought bottles of Blueberry and Peach cider for the road, and Linds bought ‘Slatherin’ Sauce’ noting, “I’m not sure what it is, but it said that you could put it on a lot of different types of meat. And I like a lot of different types of meat. And I like sauce. So…ya can’t go wrong.” After a few minutes of sampling various edibles inside of this magical land shack, we got back on the road.

We made it to savannah and checked into our ~*motel*~, and all I’d like to say about that is that you get what you pay for in savannah. I’d also like to request more of my friends to move out to savannah at some point so I have an actual friend to stay with at my leisure. I took a quick nap and then we headed back into the city to the River Street Market which is full of lots of tchotchkes and tourist trappy restaurants. Its also full of candy shops with delicious free samples  and this gourmet food store that quite literally had samples of every item in the store. Peanuts, chocolate, sauces, you name it, we ate it. For free. And in large handfuls. We only allowed ourselves to do this because we had to tide ourselves over until our dinner reservation which was at 9:45pm at Paula Deen’s restaurant, The Lady & Sons. We walked all along River Street until there was no more River Street or free samples, and headed up to the City Market, right in the middle of town on the square. There was live music and lots of cute restaurants and shops, and yes, more free samples! Wow. How great is that?  We ended up killing time outside at a café that reeled me in with a sign on the door reading “FAMOUS GA PEACH SANGRIA!” You’ll be happy to know, loyal followers, that I now have a definite response for the question “if you could drink one drink for the rest of your life, what would it be?”  chocolate milk just got bumped to the #2 spot, after this amazing peach sangria. We grabbed a table outside and listened to music, drank peach sangria out of mason jars, drank a hot peach moscato drink, drank a sweet tea/moscato drink, and danced in our chairs. We decided at 8:45 that we should just go to the restaurant and see if we could be sat early, because that would really be good southern hospitality. They did! Wow. Thanks, Paula Deen, you racist @$$hole.

Like I mentioned earlier, we had been really sampling the entire city in large palmfulls, so TBH we were not hungry, literally at all. BUT WHEN HAS THAT EVER STOPPED US!? We started out with a complimentary biscuit and pancake, because we couldn’t have turned away the nice lady who delivered it to us. Even though by this point, we were even more full, we ordered an appetizer to eat before our actual meal… We got a shrimp and crab dip with little cheesy toasts and it was spot on. Though they never give you enough toasts for a huge bowl of dip though…what is that about? They never give enough toast! Whatever. We ate the dip off our forks when we ran out of toast. Then, because we still weren’t hungry, we ordered more food. I ended up getting a ~*salad*~ covered with onion rings cause I’m a southern belle, and linds got a crab stuffed Portobello mushroom covered in cheese, because she doesn't know what it means to be a lady. Needless to say, we did not finish these dishes, and were embarrassed/disappointed in ourselves. SO SUE US!

After dinner, we rolled out of the restaurant like Violet Beauregard and walked back through the square to the car and headed back to our beautiful dwelling place. The night ends there.

We opened our precious little eyes around 9am and headed over to J.Christophers, a breakfast spot that was recommended by multiple people. They were not lying. Honestly, wow. We both got ‘skillets’ which included eggs, potatoes, cheese, and multiple other items smushed around in an individually sized cast iron skillet and placed infront of us. Amazing in every way. I miss it, and I’m not even hungry.

Before mixing

After mixing

After crying while leaving our new favorite restaurant, we drove to Chippewa Square, the spot where the bench scenes in Forrest Gump were filmed. We learned that the bench was taken out of the park and placed in a museum because hoodlums tried to steal it a bunch of times, so now the square is just lined with similar looking benches where people sit and take pictures pretending to be Tom Hanks. I threw a leaf in the air and pretended it was a feather…yadda yadda use your imagination.

"Do I look like I'm waiting for a bus?" 

We then went to Forsyth Park, a beautiful huge park in the middle of Savannah with a beautiful huge fountain and lots of babies and doggies. While taking a lovely stroll, we came across a wedding! It was so pretty and we stood there and watched, along with the rest of the people at Forsyth. If anyone knows a couple that got married there on 12/28, please get me in touch with them because I have an awkwardly large amount of photos/videos of their wedding ceremony that I’m sure they would like to have.

After Forsyth we had to walk back to J Christopher’s because we wanted more food *gasp* we forgot to take a picture in front of the restaurant and that will just not fly on this trip. We snapped a picture, hopped in the car, and got on our merry way to Atlanta.

Next time you hear from us, we’ll still be full, but we’ll still be eating.

Ta Ta For Now!

*drops mic*

Here's a vlog!