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The Drive South and New Orleans

Hi,

For those of you who haven’t heard this:  I’M MARRIED!!  I still can’t believe it and say it to someone at least once a day!

As of yesterday (Monday), we are now in Lafayette, Louisiana…the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun culture. We’ve been on the road for a week, although truthfully, it feels like a lot longer.  If you’ve been seeing my updates on Facebook, you’ll have a good idea of where we’ve been and what we’ve done as I’ve been checking in there regularly.  We haven’t had Wi-Fi for the huge majority of our trip, so I’ll start from the beginning for those that have not been following on Facebook.

The Drive

We left on Tuesday (September 20th) at about noon.  We had a very leisurely drive to Pine Grove, Pennsylvania where we stopped at a very divey Econo-Lodge for a night. It was a completely gross hotel and we really could not wait to get out of there.  We drove a solid, easy twelve hours on Day 2 (Wed. September 21) and made it all the way to Fort Payne, Alabama after passing through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee.  Thursday (Day 3), we drove through Alabama and Mississippi before crossing into Louisiana and we arrived in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) at 4 pm and checked into a B&B in Faubourg Marigny.   The drive was really no problem at all and actually, I thought it was enjoyable.

Our drive down was amusing due to the blatant differences between Canadians and Americans that always shock me.  First, the road side signs on the way down here ranged from the stupid (“It’s better to have an abortion than a baby” and “Are they making a monkey out of you?” —-> a sign by an anti-evolution group that wants creationism taught in schools) to bizarre (at a Subway restaurant: “Turkey, Ham and Bacon Sub (all turkey products”  —–> WTF?) to the more ominious (“Stop, Drop and Roll doesn’t work in hell” and “REPENT and prepare to meet thy God”.  Also, we have (so far) only run into two Americans that know where Ottawa is, and are shocked to learn that it is Canada’s capital.  *sigh*

Our most amusing episode happened in Mississippi when we stopped at some super teeny town to get gas and lunch (the only restaurant was in the gas station).  We walked in to a heating lamp with 28 different types of fried chicken, chose our lunch, and when I was at the cash register, I grabbed a copy of a local newspaper called the Jailhouse Times.  Tel and I read it during lunch and KILLED ourselves laughing….it is a *weekly* complilation of all of the people that have been arrested in Mississippi, their mug shot and what they were arrested for…..of course, there is interesting commentary along with the pictures.  Some examples of arrests: “lustful touching with intent to ravish”, “speeding between 1 and 20 miles over the speed limit”, “abscondery”, “possession of precursors” and “petit larceny”.  When we got back on the interstate, we realized that *I* was guilty of three crimes that were in that paper: Speeding (I was doing 15 miles over the speed limit), lustful touching with intent to ravish (it is my honeymoon after all!), and most amusingly, ABSCONDERY as I had taken the Jailhouse Times from the little Mississippi store without paying for it!  Did we ever get a good laugh out of that…..after Tel did a quick check to make sure we weren’t being followed by the local Sheriff!

NOLA:

We arrived in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) on Thursday around dinnertime and checked into our B&B in Faubourg Marigny.  After chilling out and having a glass of wine with the manager, we headed down to the French Quarter by foot for a super yummy dinner of blackened catfish and mahi-mahi and some beers.   As the B&B was full for the weekend, we were not sure where we were going to stay, but eventually decided to rent a condo right in the heart of the French Quarter, where we spent the next three days in a blissfully air-conditioned, quiet space.  Our 4 days in NOLA were mostly spent wandering around, soaking up the wonderful, easygoing vibe of the city.  The people in Louisiana are unfailingly friendly….they give Newfoundlanders a run for their money when it comes to openness.  The city reminds me of Havana, Cuba and Valpariso, Chile….two other cities that really seem to understand “the beauty of decay”.  Truly, so many parts of NOLA are crumbling, but it works and the French Quarter is beautiful.  Beautiful that is, with the exeception of Bourbon Street’s raunchy area, which is a specatcle of strip bars, t-shirt shops, frat boys and seemingly every bachelor/bachelorette party ever held.  Honestly, just an excuse to act badly….we both HATED it.

We took two city tours while there: one on an airconditioned bus (which was terrible) and one in a horse drawn carriage (which was awesome) and ate and ate and ate!  We have had seafood every single day of our trip and it’s been amazing.  Three times so far, I have ordered a blackened dish and asked the server to tell the chef to “make me cry” with hotness…..I haven’t cried yet, but I am going to keep trying!  Tel and I also paid a visit to a music exchange store on Magazine Avenue, where I surprised her with a 60+ year old vintage trumpet.  We spent our Saturday night in NOLA at a gay bar right across the street from our condo and had one of the funnest nights ever.  It is called “Good Friends Bar” and is a small, neighbourhood joint where everyone knows each other.  We were instantly welcomed into the group and it felt like every person into their world bought us drinks and cheered our wedding and honeymoon.

 Those of you who know me know that it is very hard for me to resist being political about things, and so I am going to do that now.  My post about NOLA would not be complete if I did not talk about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city and its occupants. Our stupid air conditioned tour bus took us through part of the lower ninth ward, the poor and largely African-American area that was ravaged by Katrina in 2005.  Although Katrina was almost exactly six years ago, the damage is visible everywhere. A huge number of houses in the lower ninth have not been rebuilt, and still sit in a shambles everywhere.  You can see holes in roofs that were hacked out because residents went from the first floor, to the second, to the attic and then frantically (and if they were lucky) hacked their way out of roof as the floodwaters rose.  For those who were not so lucky…..well, on those houses, we saw notes from search and rescue folks indicating the number of dead bodies inside.  We drove past a painted sign on a house saying “Two dead bodies inside”, and I could not stop the tears.  Although they are trying to rebuild, it is clear how badly they have been failed by every single level of Government in the city….and truthfully, it is impossible for me to believe that this failure is not race related. We learned of the ongoing consequences of Katrina in terms of the decreased population and the lack of infrastructure.  For example, a grocery store in the heart of the ward has not reopened or recovered from the damage done by Katrina….which means that residents now have to travel a much longer distance to buy food.  SO much of the rebuilding has been done by foundations or charities (as opposed by the Government), including Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation which has built 80 new eco-homes that can withstand a Katrina class hurricane (and for which he paid himself) and the Musician’s Village, a community built by Harry Connick Jr to give musicians a place to live, thus ensuring that music continued to thrive in NOLA.   Although it was interesting to learn about the area and how badly FEMA let these folks down, on my way out, I made this promise to myself: I will never again visit the lower ninth ward on an air conditioned tour bus; if I am back again, it will be because I am there to HELP, not to witness other people’s suffering.

Now we are in Lafayette after having arrived here yesterday.  It is the heart of French speaking Louisiana and we love it here.  The towns are small, there are bayous and wetlands everywhere, the people are friendly, the history is amazing. We will write a long post about it tomorrow and include pictures of our swamp tour today.

Thanks for reading everyone, and again, we apologize about not writing before now!

Bye for now,

Mel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guess what? We’re married!

 

Yesterday, under a beautiful, cloudless sky, we laughed and cried and tied the knot, literally.

After what was a relatively calm day filled with great intent, we walked down the aisle, Mel with her parents and me with my aunt and uncle.  We turned and saw a sea of love in our guests, their eyes brimming with tears and the most sincere, supportive smiles you can possibly imagine.

We listened as our officiant read two readings, the first called ‘Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog’ and the second was ‘Hands’ by Blakeston.  We each read our own vows to each other (posted below for those of you who weren’t able to hear them in person) and then the officiant tied our hands together in a traditional Celtic knot.  After the reading of the North American First Nations Blessing, we sealed our vows with a kiss (or three) to a loud and energetic crowd of people we love who cheered us on.

We went to sign the register to the song ‘To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before’ by Tom Jones, and giggled as we heard some people laughing about the song choice.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how many people would pick up on it, as I suspected some might just think it was an inopportune song choice by a DJ who might not have been paying attention – but it was completely deliberate and cracked us up when we first decided on it.

We went back to the arches where the officiant pronounced us Wife and Wife and then we were swarmed with that sea of love that I was talking about earlier.  As we hugged and cried with our guests, we found each other’s eyes across the crowded courtyard, smiled and made our way towards each other.

After photos with the wedding party and some family photos, we walked around the beautiful grounds at Strathmere with our amazing photographer, Amanda Hayden, and spent the next 40 minutes playing in the cornfields and being complete dorks together.  It was an amazing way to spend the first hour of married life with my partner.

We came back into the Lodge to more cheering, which caught us both by surprise; we intentionally left out the ‘announcing of the couple’ part, since we thought we’d be able to ‘slip in’.  Needless to say, we felt incredibly loved.

We sat down to an amazing dinner (the rumours about Strathmere’s delicious and inspiring cuisine is all true, by the way), great conversation and old friends.  We decided that we wouldn’t kiss to clinking wine glasses, but we did offer an alternative.  For those guests who wanted to encourage kissing, they could stand at their table and sing a love song, which would yield a kiss from the blushing brides.  Thankfully, table number 9, a group of our really good friends (Trix, Liz, Barb, Maggie, Wendy, Kim, Binder) kept us kissing throughout dinner AND kept our guests entertained with their vocal abilities!

After dinner, my best friend and best person, Punk, gave a brief toast/roast and she managed to squeeze in a few of my most embarrassing moments, without actually telling the whole story on any of them – which led to a few questions as we chatted with guests afterwards.

My ma tante drew tears from both Mel and I almost instantly and by the time she was done welcoming her new niece-in-law to the family, I’m not sure how many (if any) dry eyes there were in the room.

Finally – Mel’s dad, Irwin, made his way to the podium and shared a few stories about our history, in chronological order, and welcomed me to the Cole family.

Once the speeches were done, Mel and I got a chance to thank our guests, those family and friends that mean the world to us, and the people we really wanted to share our day with.

We thought we would head out on the road today, the day after the wedding, to get our honeymoon to the Deep South started.  It turns out I fell asleep at 5 p.m. and woke up at 7:30 p.m.  We decided that an early-morning start might make more sense, so here we are, writing our first of many blog posts to come, packing, and looking at our rings, a lot.

There aren’t really words to express how important yesterday was for us, how magical it was to spend the evening with our favourite people in the world and how absolutely awesome it feels to be married.

We’ll write more once we get started on our trip.  Thanks to each and every one of you, whether you were at the wedding or not, we felt your love and we truly appreciate your support!

Mel & Tel

Mel’s Vows to Tel

When I met you, I was closed to love, my friends, my family, the world. I was so afraid of being hurt that I could not be open with anyone. That all fell away when we met, and because of you, I feel like I live in an entirely different world.

Today, I am very happy and lucky to count myself amongst the very lucky few that have found their perfect fit.  I am more loving with people and with the world in general because of how I feel about you. 

I knew after four days that one day, we would be standing here, making these vows to each other.  I also knew that I had a partner, best friend, guardian of my heart, travelling companion and someone to ride shotgun with me through life.

 I feel blessed and lucky to have found the truest of love with you, and to commit my life to yours. I promise to try, every day, to remember how lucky I am to have found you, to never let apathy interfere with the joy that you bring to my life. I promise to try and be loving and compassionate with you, in the good times and the bad times, when life is easy and when it seems hard, when our love is simple and when it feels like an effort.

I look forward to discovering more of the world with you, to growing together and to growing old together, to sharing your joy and your pain, to riding shotgun through our shared life, to helping you when you need my help and to stepping aside when you don’t, to always helping where I can, and not hurting where I can’t. These things I give to you today and in all of the days of our life together.

Tel’s vows to Mel

I knew when I met you that my life was about to change forever. 

I know it’s hard to believe, but I didn’t fall in love with you because of your Hello Kitty collection or because my life suddenly became pink and really, really sparkly.

 It’s because my heart already knew yours, and that I’ve known and loved your heart for lifetimes before this. 

It’s because when my heart whispers, your heart hears it.  And when my heart shouts, your heart calms it. 

It’s because our hearts and souls take comfort in each other and give each other space, which allows us to grow and fall in love, over and over again. 

I’m constantly amazed by your compassion and humanity.  You’ve taught me so much in the past five years and you’ve opened my eyes and my heart to a world that I didn’t know existed.

 I choose you.  Only you.  I will always choose you.

Today, I promise to be your teammate and your partner.  I promise to love you unconditionally.  I promise that I will be kind to your soul and I promise that I will protect your heart with mine, forever. 

 

London Calling (and it’s our last call)

Hi everyone.

We are exhausted.  Completely and totally knackered, as the English would say.

We’ve had a great couple of days in London, but I am going to have to keep this post extremely short, because we still have to pack for our flight tomorrow morning!  Actually, make that *I* still have to pack….Tel is already in bed, almost asleep!

London is an amazing city, but it is HUGE and it is BUSY.  Huge and busy are not high up on the list of adjectives that either one of us would use to describe our ideal vacation! We’re more of the small village, watch life go by from a cafe or a pub kinda travellers.

As luck would have it, the tube workers were on strike yesterday in London, so we spent a small fortune in money and a large fortune in time sitting in taxis.  But we did manage to see another UNESCO world heritage site, Westminster Abbey.  All of the sovereigns since the 11th century have been crowned there, and that makes it a place of immense cultural and historical importance.  Unfortunately, the Abbey does not allow photos inside the church, but only in the halls surrounding it.  The church is unbelievably ornate, and even though I am not a church person, I thought it was beautiful.

 

We were also able to visit the Tower of London, another world heritage site here in London. The tower was built shortly after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and took 20 years to complete.  It was built by William the Conquerer, the first king of England, in order to assert his power and also to control the citizens that were not happy with the new monarchy.

 

Part of the original building are still standing, including “Traiter’s Gate” where prisoners would travel by barge under London Bridge (where the heads of other traiters were displayed as an ominious warning) and into the tower via these gates, to meet their fate.

 

We were also able to see the “Bloody Tower”, now harmlessly referred to as “Wakefield Tower”.  This is the place where torture took place.   You can still view the torture chambers where prisoners were held, and some of those chambers even contain the graffitti left by prisoners awaiting their fate in the 1500’s!  Three torture instruments were on display:

The Scavenger’s Daughter:

A terribly sadistic piece of equipment that would bend the prisoner’s body in three, with the calves pressed against the back of the thighs and the stomach pressed against the front of the thighs. Guards could usually get confessions, later used at trial, in less than an hour with this device.

 

 

The Rack:

In many ways, the opposite of the Scavenger’s daughter.  The prisoner was drawn on the rack, tied at the hands and the feet and stretched until the joints popped out.

It was a fascinating visit, although neither one of us could tolerate it too long due to the large number of school children visiting the tower today!  As with many of the other places in England (and the rest of the UK and Ireland), we were astounded by the history present in this part of the world.  The tower of London is where Anne Bolyne lost her life, after her husband King Henry VIII ordered her beheaded for treason…she entered the tower via Traiter’s Gate, spent her last days in the Bloody Tower, before being beheaded in front of a cheering crowd and having her head displayed on London Bridge.  Ick.  It was also interesting to hear about King Edward V (who was 12) and his younger brother, who were murdered in the tower after their father died as their uncle wanted to become King.  Their bodies were discovered on the grounds of the tower almost 200 years later!

We finished off our time here with a trip to the maritime village of Greenwich, a peaceful and beautiful town 25 minutes down the Thames by boat. Greenwich is the home of the Royal Observatory, where GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is calculated.  It is also the home of the prime meridan, the separation between the eastern and the western hemispheres.  Of course, Tel and I got the obligatory picture of her in the eastern hemisphere and me in the western!

 

We’ve had a good couple of days here, but we are TIRED.  London is exhausting, loud, and everyone is always in a rush.  Although it’s beautiful, we both prefer the smaller places!

OK, folks….it is time to close out the blog for this trip and thank you all once again for reading!  We’re coming home tomorrow, and are looking forward to seeing the kids (Bubba and Banana), and to our own bed (after the horrible hard beds here) and to COFFEE (after three weeks of drinking tea!).  Other than that, I think we’d both be happy to travel for a bit longer.

Bye for now, and thanks for reading!

Mel

It’s pronounced BAWTH…

We have arrived on what is sadly the final leg of our trip.  We checked into a fancy Best Western in London – town, paid the most we have for any accommodations on this trip and our room is the size of our washroom at home.  I guess that’s what you get for staying in London!

So, the Girl left off with our Pagan-filled Halloween night and filling you in on the fact that I wasn’t scared.  I want to go on the record though, I didn’t ask that she tell anyone anything about me not being scared…actually – I know my friends well enough to know that if I said ‘Tell people I’m not scared’, that they would jump all over it and make several less than flattering remarks about me being a scaredy-cat.  So – that’s all on that subject, but after the novelty of the pagans walking around in capes wore off, I really wasn’t scared and we had an awesome conversation with a couple of folks (Pagans, if you must know) about what was happening in Avebury and where we were visiting next.

Cue BAWTH.  We had a really easy drive to BAWTH and stayed in the most comfortable room of the entire stay at this awesome boutique spot called Queensbury Hotel.  They really surpassed our understanding of ‘customer service’ and we’re fantastic all around.  We had a great dinner, the Girl discovered she didn’t like duck and we (actually, I) slept for 11 very much-needed hours.

(Mel) Bath was a really great city.  Beautiful, with stunningly uniform architecture. It is a Roman city, a medieval city, and a Georgian city….very interesting.

 

It was originally founded as a huge, ornate Roman bath during the Roman period in England.  There are immense thermal springs surrounding the city, and unlike other areas of England, there are some cracks in the rocks deep in the earth underneath this part of the country.  This allows water that has been simmering in the earth’s insides for up to 10,000 years to percolate towards the surface, producing up to 1 million litres per day of 96 degree F water.  Even now, the springs produce enough hot water to heat a ton of the buildings in town.  The baths were ornate, with large areas for the commoners and VIPs.

 

 

 

Hundreds of years after the Roman period ended, Bath was revitalized by 3 prominent architects, who came up with a plan to give Bath its sophisticated uniformity.  The result is stunning.  Extremely mundane blocks of apartments look like ornate, important buildings!  We really loved just wandering around, getting lost in the oldness of it. 

I’ve included the rationale used by UNESCO to award it World Heritage status.  Also, a couple of pictures of us inside the baths.

Bye for now, and thanks for reading!

Mel & Tel

 

Some pictures

Hi!  Tel and I are in London now, and just back to our hotel room after a long day of exploring London….and as luck would have it, the tube was on strike today, which made our day particularly interesting!  We’ll be back soon with a post about Bath and London, but for now, here are some pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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