It’s been one year since my very first Escape Room Enthusiast adventure to the Netherlands. I loved it so much I immediately began to crave more escape experiences around the world.

So when my friends and fellow podcast co-hosts Mike and Ruby told me they were thinking of going to New Orleans and Baton Rouge, home to some of the most immersive escape rooms in North America, I immediately decided to follow them! So we booked our flights, our AirBNBs, our escapes and have finally arrived!

We got to hang out in an airport lounge!

Of course I want to document our adventures, escape or otherwise. So here we go!

Canadian Bumpkin Status: 85%

The only reason this is not higher is that I was WAY more prepared this time around for flight travel. I knew how to go through security (although I had to take my shoes off for going to the US), I had all my papers out and ready to go, I knew NOT to bring seeds into another country…that’s a long story…

I thought I had it down. After all, last time I went to Europe, a completely alien place to me where they spoke other languages and had toilets separate from their showers. This time I was just going to a US city. How different could it be?

So it turns out New Orleans is apparently super dangerous and I had several family members and friends messaging me telling me all the ways and all the places I could be mugged. I tried to shrug it off at first. I can be brave! I won’t be affected by all this fear mongering!

But then our very friendly and helpful Uber driver told us we should just take cabs everywhere because we were in a fairly sketchy neighbourhood and the area’s lighting was not great. Cue me clutching my purse and looking nervously around at everyone within a 1 meter radius of me. Everywhere.

I begged Mike and Ruby to take an Uber back to our AirBNB rather than try transit. I am not a brave soul. I relaxed after a while. I mean…not everywhere was dangerous. Then another tourist told us how all of her stuff was stolen in Houston and how apparently big a problem it was there.

I am trying not to jump to the conclusion that all of America wants to mug me.

Other things I noticed about New Orleans and American in general:

Dangerous neighbourhoods aside (every city will have dangerous neighbourhoods) New Orleans is indeed a sight to behold. There are people with drinks, people with beads, gorgeous buildings, delicious smells, lots of jazz…it’s a lot to take in…

Most everyone we have encountered in NOLA has been super friendly. Our streetcar driver turned around at one stop and made sure all the tourists knew where they were going. This would never happen in Toronto. Ever.

America still has pennies! What…WHAT…

American portions are almost always too much to handle.

Apparently if someone asks me about my shoes, I am to ignore them. Shockingly, someone did indeed stop us to ask us about our shoes. I turned on my best disinterested Torontonian attitude and walked on. I am really curious though what happens if I ask them why they like my shoes.

There is a lot of American flag style clothing. Canadians are not nearly so loyal.

Apparently it did not occur to me that a Canadian who just spent a whole winter not exposing her skin might have some effects when suddenly going into 28 degree heat…

OWWWWWWWW

The Food Adventures

New Orleans is famous for its food culture. Better than that, Ruby is a foodie and found all sorts of places to go! It only makes sense I list the famous foods we ate.

Crawfish: May is apparently crawfish season in New Orleans. We happen to be here during Crawfish Mamba, an all-you-can-eat crawfish festival. We ate buckets of them. They are a magically delicious creature. But I do not like sucking out their brains.

Much crawfish was consumed….

Beignets: Apparently if you don’t eat a beignet while in New Orleans, you haven’t actually be there. It’s basically a donut, but it’s warm and there is a metric ton of powdered sugar on it. The warm part I loved, the powdered sugar I dumped off a bit. Well worth the wait for them!

Someowhere under there is a beignet…

The Escapes

We only did one escape today. We kicked things off at Clue Carre’s French Quarter House of Curiosities. Clue Carre is the first escape room in New Orleans so it was appropriate it was our first introduction to the NOLA escape world.

French Quarter House of Curiosities is Clue Carre’s first time doing their own design (their previous rooms were all bought designs). It had a theme unique to the City which I appreciated. Our GM Reed was really friendly and nerded out with us for a few minutes afterward.

While it didn’t push boundaries, it was a solid and fun game. More than anything we get excited when a game has a consistent and logical flow. It’s harder than you think to achieve. There was one point where a puzzle seemed to be too vague and a few nitpicky “ask why”s but otherwise was a great way to start our escape adventure! We have other Clue Carre games to do later and we can’t wait!

EDIT: I forgot to mention their safety video. It’s probably my favourite safety video I have seen so far. Really cute and funny.

Tomorrow is Tourist Day (in which I try to find all the locations from the Gabriel Knight video game) and then it’s off to Escape Our Room!

I have not found Gabriel Knight’s bookstore yet…give it time though…