Miami was the first day on this cruise that the sun has shone. And we were neither of us well enough to go ashore. Nothing major, just feeling a bit below par for some reason. Still, had a nice lazy day.

After Miami, was supposed to be Key West. But there were weather issues (?high winds) so the stop was formally cancelled. The word ‘formally’ is very important here.  Nowadays, we all have specific insurance for cruises. These include compensation payments for missed ports. We all now receive an individually-addressed letter to our cabins for us to present to our insurers. I think the usual payout is £50 per port. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but P&O like it, because there’s a lot less yelling in Reception this way. Plenty of bitching on the private Facebook group, mind you, if you’re that way inclined. I was a little forlorn about the loss of my Gluten Free Key Lime Pie from Kermit’s, but never mind.

The, to quote the late, great Robin Williams, “hot and shitty”* weather resumed and humidity and solid cloud dogged us all the way to New Orleans.  The night before New Orleans, we found a rather spectacular thunderstorm, which came with us all the way up the Mississippi and stayed in NOLA with us for the entire first day of our stay. Very pretty to watch from indoors, but not much fun to wander Bourbon Street in.  And this is a different form of rain. Usually, around these ‘ere parts, you get a brief cloud burst of 10 minutes or less, followed by a couple of sticky hours while it all evaporates back off the pavements. Not in New Orleans. It did the UK thing of getting “set in” for the whole day. But still using the cloud burst setting. The rain was coming down so hard, it was bouncing back up into the air off the concrete. No one went out in that and came back unscathed.  

Day Two was less rainy but more misty. I think our thunder cloud got tired and had a lie down. On top of us and New Orleans.  At times during the day, we could barely see the other side of the river, and the people in the skyscrapers must have had a very boring day with precisely zero view out of the windows. 

We ventured ashore, as far as the shopping mall on the quayside. Big Mistake, Huge**.  Welcome to Riverwalk Outlets NOLA, The Worst Mall In America ™.  You arrive at one end, via a lift, on what appears to be therefore the first floor.  You are greeted with a Nordstrom that has internal lifts to take you up one level and bring you back down again. Don’t be confused into thinking that there is an upper level from here, there isn’t. Only Nordstrom has an up. 

So we find a map. It is laid out as if there are two levels, as per any standard shopping centre map you might find in Blighty, although, confusingly, the Level 1 that we are on seems to end with what looks like an escalator to Level B and the second diagram, underneath, is labelled Level C. Okay, odd, but okay.  So I park Dad in the food court, which is the first thing you come to (very American!),  and wander off to see what I can find for us to do, eat and/or buy.  Remember Big Mistake, Huge?  Copy and paste in here.

I’m not very good with distances at the best of times, but I reckon that mall is actually the best part of a mile long, certainly more than the half a mile Google Maps alleges. Level A does, indeed, via lift or escalator or stairs (escalator out of order) lead down to Level B.  The drop is about three feet, I reckon.  The bad bit is that, around the corner, within Level B, there is an escalator down to Level C.  But Level C is NOT underneath A or B, it’s a continuation onward! And it’s at least the same length again as Level A was. 

I made it to the other end with only one sit down on the way.  A very talkative man nagged me to let him dab my eye bags with his magic potion, so I humoured him for a few minutes, while enjoying the seating provided. I told him I saw no difference, and after encouraging me to buy some at £300 quid a tub (four tubs required, OBviously), and warning me that the website prices start at £1200 for a single tub, he finally let me go on my way.  Later on, my eye bags did look less, well, baggy, but I felt like I had PVA glue on my face and kept trying to peel it off! Nasty. Can’t imagine why anyone would choose to do that to themselves every day. Insanity and vanity are similar words for a reason!

Anyway, when I finally made it to the last shop in the mall, it was a Le Creuset! Yes, having just trudged well over half a mile, I am now going to buy the heaviest cookware in existence and then lug it all the way back down the half mile or more back to my starting point/ ship/ car/ bus. Absolutely.

It took me 45 minutes to get there and back to dad, by which point we had learned that, (a) there is ZERO mobility assistance anywhere in this mall – no buggies, no wheelchairs for hire, precious little seating, not even a disabled toilet.  No Shopmobility here. And also, Gluten Free is not a concept that anyone here has ever even heard of, never mind actually stocking. The blank stares were a wonder to behold. Took me right back.

So we went back to the ship and passed out, utterly knackered and somewhat disappointed. We did have plans to go further afield, but that mall broke us, physically and mentally. I had even downloaded the local bus app, in order to buy trolleybus tickets.  Oh well, never mind. Maybe next time.  Instead, we ate on the ship (which, admittedly, we have derided others for doing in the past, but we didn’t have much choice!), and gazed out as the mist rolled in with the tide, and gradually deleted the freight tankers heading past us down toward the open sea. 

Please note, New Orleans is not a sea port; it is a river port.  It’s about 80 miles upriver from the delta/ gulf (this is a very rough reckoning based on it taking us almost exactly eight hours at about 10 knots to get back into open water).  As neither of us sleep very well when the water is too still, even in my utterly shattered condition (woke at 4pm the following day), I was awake (however briefly!) when we got back into the moving waters at about 1am.

Side note: either the muzak is getting marginally less awful, or I’m getting more tolerant in my old age. Recent efforts have included Can You Feel The Love Tonight, on the pan pipes, which was actually rather lovely, although Get Into the Groove wasn’t quite so successful on the same instrument.  Nikita on the harp was not a success, although Lady in Red was.  Abba seem to write stuff that works well on the accordion; both Chiquitita and I have a dream were not just bearable, but bordering on being actually enjoyable.  The Last Waltz on the solo trumpet is still being considered by the judges.

*Good Morning, Vietnam.

** Pretty Woman.