Dearest You,
I once believed New Orleans was a place to experience beignets and drink alcohol in the street. A place where everyone enjoys Mardi Gras and all the spoils that a “real good” party provides. When I visited in 2019, I was glad to be there but didn’t feel the need to go back. It was literally a once-in-a-lifetime trip for me.
However, my friends decided to have their bachelorette/bachelor party in NOLA. I wanted to celebrate with them, which meant I was making my way back to the hot city of New Orleans. And this time around, I was planning the bachelor party. I was asked to lead a small group of bachelor people (the groom, a boy, and two girls) through New Orleans. Talk about pressure…
The Gator Farming
Event number one: Insta-Gator Farm. Step one: pick up one of the groom’s people from the airport. One of our team members had the unfortunate opportunity to fly and get stuck in Miami overnight on standby. This was the first time she and I had met. Instead of catching up on sleep, she was venturing over a bridge towards the gator farm with us. And what a venture that was. I think the group would agree that the bridge was at least two hours long. But luckily, it only took an hour to get to the farm.
We picked up some Po-Boys and then made our way to the gators. We were the only people in the parking area, and immediately a man, Royce, came to our car and let us know that all the tours were canceled due to an accident. He told us that a gator completely ripped off a tour guide’s arm. Everyone giggled. I internally panicked. Two minutes later, he broke and let us know he was our tour guide. The tour wasn’t going to start for another twenty minutes, so we walked around the farm’s property. It was a lovely expanse of land and a small…lake?. Don’t worry; no gators were in this area. At least I didn’t see any.
Before the tour started, we were informed about extra features available for purchase. The groom bought us a picture with a 4-foot alligator and a chance to catch baby alligators. It wasn’t an expensive upgrade, so why not!
I learned more than I ever expected to know about Crocodylidae. (Yes, that is the actual word. No, don’t ask me to pronounce it.) Specifically, the alligators in New Orleans, which there are many. Many, many, many! Just ask Royce. The biggest “duh” education for me was when Royce pointed out what they do with the farm alligators that aren’t released into the wild. It helped to be reminded we were on a FARM and think of them like the cows that live next to me. They’re raised for a purpose, which can be pretty tasty if you know how to cook them. But I try not to linger on this fact. Instead, I remember getting to feed gators, which was a little unnerving considering how high they could jump and how close my hand was within that distance.
Some hands-on fun we got to participate in was catching gators. They were around 6-month-old babies with tape securely wrapped around their mouths. Those little buggers can apparently rip your fingers up. But they’re so cute! Their front legs float along the top of the water, and then they just lounge there. It’s adorable! If you ever go to this farm, I suggest doing the Catch ‘Em bit. You’ll pet them, hold them, and stare into their beautiful, creepy eyes. It’s fantastic.
This is a tour I’d definitely suggest to people going to New Orleans. It’s fun, informative, and a little goofy.
After the tour, we drove back over the “two-hour” bridge and to the Air BnB. When we got there, all the girls were getting ready to go to Bourbon Street. We quickly caught up with them to have a large bridal/bachelor party!
Bourbon Street
If you asked me what places we stopped at…Please don’t ask me what places we stopped at.
Before heading out, we were given a scavenger hunt list. This was the night we took on many of the tasks. Our guy grooms-person kissed a bald man on the head. Our girl grooms-person got a random girl’s number and had another girl put five dollars in her bra. I proposed to some girl and used a dumb (AWESOME) pickup line on my bartender. Our groom, Casey, got a woman to buy him a shot and danced/jumped crazily on stage at Karaoke. That last one wasn’t part of the scavenger hunt but it was hilarious.
The night was full of so many drunk people. This is great when you have to ask randos to participate in a strange bachelor party scavenger hunt. However, when we were earlier told by a tour guide that Bourbon Street not New Orleans but it is its own little city where tourists pee in the street, I can’t say he was wrong. That aside, it’s fun to people watch and check out the many different kinds of bars.
The Karaoke bar we ended up at for a while was great. It was almost like a singalong bar with everyone belting out with the person on stage. We also visited one of the country bars where a couple of our people rode a mechanical bull. They’d slightly regret that in the morning, but for now, it was awesome. It was a lot of fun. However, live music in New Orleans is a little more my style.
I think a perfect aspect of our grooms-people group is that all of them were introverts. So once they hit a limit, they were ready to jet. Which aligned with my exhaustion and ready to call it quits for the night. I don’t know if we even made it to midnight, but it was still fun. I get to enjoy many memories and throw them into people’s faces at later dates.
Day one was pretty awesome; who knows what the next few days have to offer.
