Rage Relief Kit #5: Life Is Short, Order the Room Service

One of my favorite things in life is room service at a nice hotel. Especially breakfast. So I was pretty thrilled when my friend Yesha Callahan invited me to New Orleans for the Jazz & Heritage Festival to tag along because she was staying at The Windsor Court, a historic, five-star hotel in downtown NOLA.

While the hotel is very pretty and full of old-world/old-money charm, my joy was not over the fluffy bed or the many horse-jumping-themed paintings that hung on the walls, but the room service menu. A glorious treat, it featured late-night fried oyster po' boys and Belgian waffles with berries, bacon, and beignets for breakfast.

I was in heaven.

Unfortunately, by day four in New Orleans, I was also in hell with a hangover that took the crown from my very first hangover as the WORST HANGOVER I've had IN LIFE. But the Windsor made my own personal hell a bit better because at least this hell had a hotel room table set for two featuring a pot of coffee, carbs, and other confections. For this Rage Relief Kit, I encourage you to order the room service. Life is hard. Pope Francis is dead. A certain someone would like to be pope, but I'm going to put that one down as highly unlikely, as why would the Catholic Church want to distract Cthulhu from destroying the world?

I know room service costs a grip for absolutely no reason at all, but considering how so many hotels have done away with a proper room service, I say support this dying (expensive) art, order some $24 hotel eggs, and live your best life.

Or the best you can with a NOLA-induced hangover.

New Orleans is my favorite city in the South (sorry, Atlanta!) It's probably because it's also one of the oldest cities in the United States. I'm a history nerd (visiting Dooky Chase and learning its Civil Rights history was a real highlight), and I have been into the Big Easy since my first visit as a pre-teen. The architecture is stunning. The people are warm (like, talk to all the locals you can, because they have some STORIES). The food is incredible. And the alcohol is cheap and plentiful.

Bartenders are true artists in New Orleans — artists at getting you all the way messed up, but in a smooth and delicious way, so you don't realize you're in trouble until it's far too late. I still can't get over the speakeasy Blair and Brandon Dottin-Haley showed us inside 34 Restaurant and Bar, where our bartender whipped up drinks based on our tastes, then couldn't remember the recipes he created on the fly to make perfect cocktails. Also on my ill-fated third day in New Orleans, I spent the afternoon with Yesha's friends Arik and Doris and had two (too many) hurricanes, featuring one from Pat O'Briens, the home of the hurricane. The second came earlier when I was walking around the French Quarter, sipping Cafe Pontalba's hurricane. Later, I had tiki drinks at Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29, then drank, I dunno, two or three beers at a Trombone Shorty block party thrown by Accura at Tipitina's. There might have been a phantom beer from another bar in there somewhere, as I'm a big fan of Abita's Purple Haze and definitely had two of those at one point. I even had the bourbon peach tea at Li'l Dizzy's Cafe, which had the best fried chicken I had the entire time I was in New Orleans. Every bite was heaven.

By the end of the evening at Tipitina's, dancing to Trombone Shorty Academy's students, I was definitely overserved from a day of overservice by the city of New Orleans.

I had an amazing time, but I paid for it!

On my fourth and final day in New Orleans, I woke up with the worst hangover of my life. There were two previous hangovers that were also terrible. The first (and previous worst hangover) happened when my coworkers in Texas got me wasted on several Sex on the Beaches after I announced my divorce at 24. My second-worst hangover happened years later in Washington, D.C., where I somehow managed to go out to a friend's brunch despite being borderline incoherent and miserable.

I'm still recovering from this most recent New Orleans hangover, which started on Tuesday, and I'm still dealing with the remnants of today. That's a hangover with a three-day aftereffect.

I'm officially old and have decided I'm never allowing this to happen EVER again. So apologies for this not being a proper Rage Relief Kit with recipes and fun things I've read recently. Nope. You're just getting the barely coherent ramblings of a woman who fought New Orleans, and New Orleans won.

But it was always going to win.

It's New Orleans!