Meeting Bloggers IRL

New Orleans is a great place to live, an even better place to visit. And it appears to be the place to go when you turn a certain age. For the sake of keeping confidences, I'll not mention the specific age. Two different bloggers that I've written to online via blogs, emails, texts, Skype, came in town to celebrate birthdays.

Ok, heads up - if your birthday falls in the summer time, do not come to New Orleans on your birthday. Natives stay inside with the AC, while tourists melt.

I won't go into a lot of detail or many pictures of my fellow blogger friends, because I don't want to give out too much personal info.

The first bloggers to visit were T&C from Philly. (My first bloggers to meet IRL - Woot!) They got engaged in Paris, France. How romantic! They are a sweet couple who fit right into the laid back atmosphere of the South. T calls me a Southern Belle, which is great and partly comes from the poetry forum I used to run years and years ago before blogging. I recognized his poetic voice when we were writing emails and I'm thrilled that he has a published poetry book. Greg and I look forward to attending their wedding.

The next blogger to visit was L from NYC. She loved the night life of New Orleans and even met some new friends from a Haunted House Tour group. L also appreciated the Garden District, Street Cars, Cemeteries and Swamp Tours (something that I had yet to do and took the opportunity to schedule while she was in town - so cool, I even held a 2 year old gator!). Below are pictures of us at Pat O's (Bourbon Street), famous for the hurricane drinks and the fire/water fountain.

Meeting T&C and L were definitely new experiences. I learned a lot about them and also about myself. After their visits, I read some survival tips for meeting bloggers IRL (in real life). I thought I'd share them:

Try to keep from taking it too seriously.
Pick something comfy to wear that makes you feel good, but don't obsess about what you look like.
Meet them somewhere in public, safety first.
Not every minute has to be planned doing things, you need down time to talk and goof around.
Don't worry about not 'clicking' IRL, plan on there being differences in personalities.

Focus on the things you had in common while blogging and center it around that.