Ets and I wondered if it were perhaps a sign from up high that maybe we just weren't meant to go to the Big Easy. I mean, a catastrophic event that cancelled almost all flights less than 24 hours before you're supposed to fly is not what I would call 'subtle'. Even when we made it to Narita Airport and the flight to Dallas was delayed by over 2 hours, we still got on the plane surrounded by hundreds of people who had been there since the day before. Add to that some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced and you start to seriously doubt if your well-laid plans were indeed well-laid. But things started to look up. We had completely and irrevocably missed our connecting flight to New Orleans but the nice American Airlines people had put us on the next flight an hour later and even upgraded us to First Class (which sounds nice but wasn't given the plane was only a tiny one). Suffice to say, we arrived safe and sound (even if our taxi driver was a speed freak Haitian) and are looking forward to starting our French Quarter explorings.