We just had an awesome vacation to New Orleans! Anthony turned 30 in December and I went big for his birthday… I got him a trip to New Orleans and tickets to WWE’s Wrestlemania 34! The trip just took place April 6-10. My brother, cousin and cousin’s girlfriend all came with.
See, I’m a fan of wrestling. Ever since I was little I was “forced” in to liking wrestling. My brother is 7 years older than me and I was always his wrestling dummy to practice his skills to become a pro-wrestler. I grew up on Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair, The Bushwhackers, Jake the Snake, Macho Man, etc. I watched wrestling on and off during my teenage years and was up to date on the current wrestlers.
Fast forward to 2013, when I met my husband, Anthony. We met in January of 2013 and I don’t think he even mentioned wrestling or the WWE well in to at least a year of dating. Not a single DX or NWO reference. Never single mention of The Rock or Stone Cold Steve Austin. I had no clue he even knew what WWE stood for. All of a sudden out of the blue everything was wrestling! He would quote wrestling. Talk about wrestling with my brother. Quote late 90’s wrestling sayings. And even mention historical wrestling references from before he was born! Who was this guy?! Little did he know, I could keep up!
We started going to WWE shows together at the Van Andel Arena, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We probably have been to about 3 or 4 of them together since we started dating. Well, the culmination of the past 5 years together as wrestling fans were about to have a weekend we could not forget. Wrestlemania 34 in NOLA (ADAM COLE) BAY BAY!
The first 30 minutes of our journey to New Orleans should have been an explanation how this trip was going to go down. I picked the perfect flight to NOLA. It was Delta and left on a Friday at 5:50pm, had a 1.5 hour layover in Atlanta, and arrive to NOLA at 9:50pm (plenty of time to enjoy NOLA before Wrestlemania activities took place). Well, we got to the airport at 4:00pm AND OUR FLIGHT WAS DELAYED ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES! My cousin and his girlfriend were supposed to be on the same flight as us, but got moved to a different flight. We did not. We were freaking out. There was no way we could do a 20 minute lay over in Atlanta. No way! We talked to the Delta attendant to switch our flight because they switched my cousin’s, but there was no room for us. Whelp, I guess we have to press our luck and hope our flight is not delayed any more than it already was.
Naturally, we went to the bar in the Gerald R. Ford Airport, had a few beers and ate some food before take off. With our delay, we had about 3.5 hours to spare. So I guess you could assume how we were feeling at that point…
Our flight to Atlanta was nowhere near full. We were in the front of our poor-man’s section. Everyone on the flight was freaking out about missing their connection in Atlanta. It seemed like all of us had a 20-minute layover now. The flight attendants made it clear upon landing if anyone wanted to move forward to get out faster, we could. Thankfully, people who were in front of the plane heard everyone’s worries and if they didn’t have a layover, they stayed back for us to get off. THEN THE SPRINT STARTED!
We landed in the D terminal and our connecting flight as in the A terminal! Atlanta is supposed to be the busiest airport in the nation. I was prepared to drop ‘bows and plow people over. We got off the plane, found our bearings, and sprinted! Anthony was in front of me and got on the right escalator down to the tram. Everyone was going on the right escalator and no one was on the left escalator. So, I ran down the left escalator and yelled “SUCKA” to Anthony while he stood in place slowly going down, while getting strange looks from everyone else around him. Rest assured people, that “SUCKA” was not for you!
Well, that was anti-climatic. I waited for the tram to come and Anthony walked up leisurely to me. The tram pulled up 30 seconds later! Ha! I was a little dramatic, wasn’t I?
3 terminal stops later, and it was our terminal, terminal A. We got off and had to run to our gate… Well, remember how we had to go down an escalator to get to the tram? Well we had to RUN UP AN ESCALATOR to get to our gate. Have you ever tried running up a two story escalator with a carry-on bag that weighs about 20 pounds? I mean, I’ve been working out, but I was not prepared for this. At this point, I was ready for the connecting flight to leave me. It’s ok, they can sacrifice me. I am not going to make it to our gate on time. I’ve accepted it.
Anthony got to the gate before me and is waving angrily at me, trying to tell me to hurry up. I’m in view of the gate. They can see me. They are not going to leave without me. He was in frantic mode. I was calm, my acceptance of my fate has taken over. It was just a plus that I was going to make my flight. I was content. We got on the plane and Anthony had a pure adrenaline rush. He was all over the plane trying to find our seats (we were on the fancy plane where half of the seats are to the left of the door and the other half are on the right). He was confused and the flight attendant finally told him to take a breath and calm down.
Sure enough, we made in to NOLA despite our delay and high-speed layover. My cousin and his girlfriend landed 5 minutes after us. It all worked out!
We booked a VRBO in Treme. It was a perfect location, only a 10-minute walk from Bourbon Street and 25-30-minute walk from the Smoothie King Center and Mercedes Benz Superdome, where all the Wrestlemania actives were taking place. We were in our Uber to the VRBO, about a 1/4 mile away from our residence for the next 4 days and we all went “Uhh, guys, where are we?” There was a burnt down house, sketchy looking buildings, port-a-potties, and lots of trash! We pulled up to our house and just all giggled. “Well, this going to be interesting.”
We should have known the house was going to be interesting when we got an e-mail from the host a couple of days before explaining how to use the keypad and lock on the door. It sounded complicated in the e-mail and was in person, as well! One of us better be sober every time we try to get in, otherwise we’d be locked out of our VRBO forever!
We got situated and headed to Bourbon Street for our first night to get our hurricane on. Bourbon Street is like nothing I have ever experienced… Then add WWE fans in to the mix… HOLY MOLY! That place had some energy! Anthony was wearing a “Happy Rusev Day” t-shirt and he’s never had so many people give him high-fives or touch him as he did that night. We even saw people dressed up as their favorite wrestlers and have matches on the street! GROSS! Horses takes giant poops on that street. People puke. I’m sure people even poop on it! EWWWW! I would not lay down or put my hands on Bourbon Street, but so many people certainly were!
We only stayed out for about 2 hours. It was about 2 in the morning and we had long days ahead of us. Day 1 was complete. We owned it. We sprinted through airports, worked out on escalators, survived the VRBO introduction, and drank a few hurricanes.
I’m a natural early riser, despite being an hour behind in timezone. My cousin and I were both up first around 7:00am. I have this thing that if I get up before Anthony, I wake him up. New Orleans is no different…. ESPECIALLY IN NEW ORLEANS! We have so much to do today! We had to get up to to grocery shopping, shower and get ready, go brewery hopping, then go to the Smoothie King Center for NXT Takeover New Orleans.
Anthony has a weekend morning routine… Take a poop. Sure enough, it’s no different in New Orleans. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom with his cell phone to watch the YouTubes. 20 minutes went by, no Anthony. He must be watching some good videos, but how are his legs not falling asleep? After about 30 minutes, we see Ant pop around the corner with a very guilty look…
HOLD ON GUYS! THIS STORY HAS TO BE HEARD! IT GETS GOOD AND CANNOT BEEN UNSEEN/HEARD……. MOVE FORWARD WITH YOUR OWN DISCRETION!… DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU!
Naturally, being the loving wife that I am, I asked in wife tone “What did you do?”
Ant: There’s poop coming out of the shower!
Me: What? No there’s not. (My cousin is staying quiet still)
Ant: Yes, there’s POOP coming out of the shower drain.
Me: How did that happen?
Ant: The toilet clogged. I tried plunging it for 10 minutes and I heard slushing noises outside of the toilet. I looked over and THERE IS POOP COMING OUT OF THE SHOWER!
Cousin: You’re kidding, right?
Me: No… he wouldn’t joke around about that.
Cousin: I got to see this.
Me: I’m ok. I’ll stay here. Go get it out of the shower! I’m not going in that bathroom!
Cousin walks to the bathroom: OH MY GOD! He wasn’t lying!
Sure enough, there WAS poop coming out of the shower drain! No matter how much Ant plunged the toilet, the clog was not moving. We read something on the VRBO reviews that the toilet clogged, but it was because there was a feminine product stuck in it. No one on this trip was even using feminine products at this time! There was definitely no foul play involved here!
Poor Anthony had to go in to my brother’s room and wake him up from a dead sleep. My brother wanted nothing to do with this and Ant felt really guilty. I finally was able to get the host’s phone number to give her a call… Yeah, that was a fun conversation
“Hi ________. This is Sarah, I’m staying in your VRBO this weekend. We are having some plumbing issues going on right now. There is poop coming out of the shower.”
It went as you expected… she had a long pause and did not know what to say. She came up right away to see that we were not lying. There was definitely poop coming out of the shower. She tried plunging the toilet and got about as far as Anthony did… NOTHING HAPPENED. Her final decision was to call a plumber.
We had to get out of the house… My plans for the day were shot to shit (pun definitely intended). My brother found a nice little cafe about a 10-minute walk away. This was a cool walk, We saw a lot of unique old houses and walked past a local’s funeral (sounds strange, but was actually really cool part of the culture).
We ended up at our cafe, Lil’ Dizzy’s Cafe, and were all relieved! Keep in mind, no one has gone to the bathroom yet, well besides Ant! It was only around 9:30am, and we were ready for some authentic Louisiana food! I ordered coffee and a shrimp poboy! It was sooo good! It made me forget about the situation back at the VRBO!
We got back to the VRBO and the host was still there with the plumber. Anthony went straight in to the bathroom to see the situation… The host went up to Ant and whispered to him “It was just a really big poop”. You could see the Ant smirk, being extremely proud of himself at that moment.
We couldn’t be awful house guests. We all offered to help clean the bathroom. Bleach, scrub, whatever we had to do, but she insisted on cleaning it herself. I think she had some fear that there would be more damage. She wouldn’t even let us get a snake to get the original clog out. She kept on talking about the money she put in to the house and wanted to make sure we didn’t damage it. Ok, that made sense at that time…
Well, everything was clean now. The host left to go back to her home downstairs. Not more than 5 minutes later, someone else (not going to name any names) decided to test the toilet out themselves…. AND CLOGGED IT! YES! IT WAS CLOGGED AGAIN… This person even BROKE THE PLUNGER trying to unclog it…. FML.
At this point, we were all dying laughing… but the clogger was pissed that there was terrible plumbing in the house. We were too embarrassed at that time to call the host right away. We decided to leave and go to a brewery (don’t worry, I’ll review this brewery in another post) before NXT. We were gone for the rest of the night getting drunk to forget the event that would now forever be called: Poopgate 2018.
I would like you to keep in mind that all of this happened during our first 12 hours of the 4 day trip.
P.S. We did not poop in the VRBO for the rest of the 3 days we were there. We reserved Dave and Buster’s downtown New Orleans for that task.
P.S.S. I do not recommend staying in this VRBO. The host was not very friendly at this point. She is the one that has AWFUL plumbing where you can’t even take a normal poop, it wasn’t our fault! She would get a 2/5 stars from me. Cool building/location. Not a cool host/plumbing.
Married without Kids 