Day Five in New Orleans (daytime)

So many pictures, I have to split this post into two.

On Wednesday I ventured off to explore the French Quarter on my own.  This neighborhood was founded in the early 1700s as part of the French Louisiana colony.  Fires in the late 1700s destroyed most of the original buildings and when they were rebuilt they reflected Spanish architecture because by this time Spain owned much of the area.

 

Old buildings...



New buildings...



Little alleyways.



Walking from behind St Louis Cathedral towards Jackson Square.



The cathedral was very quiet and solemn inside.



Ceiling of the cathedral.





The pulpit looks like a giant clamshell.



The sanctuary.



The organ at the back of the cathedral.



It had been perfectly sunny when I went into the cathedral, but when I came back out it was raining.  That was OK, as the rain had driven away most of the street vendors between the cathedral and Jackson Square, so I got to walk around in relative peace.



Statue of Andrew Jackson, with the cathedral in the background.



I read somewhere that this statue of Andrew Jackson astride a horse was the first statue in which a horse had two feet off the ground.



Cathedral again.



After I left the cathedral I wandered down more residential streets.





This is the Old Ursuline Convent, which some say is the oldest building in New Orleans.  This is a French style of architecture as opposed to Spanish.



Across the street from the convent is the Beauregard-Keyes House.  An architect from Baltimore designed the house and garden, which was built in the 1800s.  I loved this little barred window into the garden.



Peering through the bars you see this.



More meandering through the streets.







I love the balcony gardens.





Though this house is not marked in any way and sits unassumingly on the street, it is the LaLaurie Mansion, with a grisly history of torture and murder and is considered to be haunted.



I believe this is a type of house called a shotgun house, which is very narrow and long, and consists of rooms leading one into another without any hallways.



I think I would have had to turn sideways to walk through this narrow doorway!



I had been walking for several hours in the steamy heat and I took a break at the French Market, drinking a bottle of water and listening to these guys on guitars and harmonica.  I decided there was no way I could walk all the way back to my hotel -- my feet were killing me.  But I didn't have exact change for the streetcar, so I was simply forced to go to Cafe du Monde and enjoy a frozen cafe au lait to break my $20.



Behind the Cafe, this lady looked quite comfortable.  I thought of stopping to soak my feet in her fountain but thought that would be kind of gauche.



Clothes hanging in a shop, looking more like they are on a clothesline hanging to dry.



Some other tourists helped me get on the right streetcar and took this picture of my exhausted self!  As soon as I got back up to my room at the hotel, I ran cold water into the bathtub and sat on the edge letting my feet soak.  Ahhhhhh...  Less than an hour later, Dan called and said he and Kevan were done for the day, so why don't I come down to the Convention Center to meet them and go somewhere for dinner?

New Orleans Day 4

On Tuesday I finally did get out and do some sightseeing. I caught the St Charles Streetcar a block up from the hotel and rode it out to the Garden District.

As I posted on Facebook, "Bourbon Street smelled like pee and vomit.  The Garden District smells like flowers."  This is obviously a rich part of town, and I guess it was that way from the beginning.  The French Quarter was settled by Creoles before New Orleans was even part of the United States.  After the Louisiana Purchase, Americans tried to move into New Orleans but clashed with the Creoles over everything -- religion, culture, language, and business opportunities.  So the Americans moved upriver and created the Garden District, making it especially opulent basically on purpose.

Ahead of time I had printed out a Garden District walking tour.  I strayed from the tour now and then, but it was good to have some guidance and further detail into some of the things I was seeing.  For instance, this house has a very cool cornstalk fence.  One story says it's because the owner's wife missed the cornfields of her native Iowa.  Another story says the owner's wife picked it because it was the most expensive fence in the catalog.

Another old iron horse hitching post.

This house used to be a Catholic chapel.  Anne Rice owned it at one point.

Beautifully kept.  I bet it costs a lot just to maintain these old houses.

It was a terribly hot day so I loved being able to travel through these cool shady tunnels where trees curved and met over the sidewalk.

It was interesting to see the different styles of architecture.  This house is supposedly haunted.

A mysterious and inviting door.

We have this bush in Florida too.  It smells so heavenly and rich and reminds me of honeysuckle from back in Maryland.  I finally found out it is called Confederate Jasmine.  A hedge of this ensures a very pleasant walk down the sidewalk.

This 6700 square foot, 5 bedroom, 5 bath house can be yours for only $2.5 million!

I love the old sidewalks but you definitely have to watch your step.

This fence's woven pattern is believed to be the precursor to the chain link fence.

Some houses are nearly hidden by large walls and hedges, and can only be glimpsed through gates.  Often I could hear water fountains tinkling behind the walls.

Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, died in 1889 in this house belonging to one of his friends.

This is the wall surrounding Lafayette Cemetery.

The culmination of my walking tour was one of the sights I most wanted to see:  Lafayette Cemetery, one of New Orleans' famous old "Cities of the Dead."  I guess the people of New Orleans soon learned that burying their dead underground was not a good idea in an area with a high water table, since after rainstorms, coffins tended to float back up to the surface.  So they built above ground tombs, laid out just like little houses on streets.

Many tombs house entire families.  This family lost at least seven children before they grew out of toddlerhood.  Many tombs listed multiple infants and children dying in a family.

This was the only open/empty tomb I came across, and it was especially interesting to me since Koenig is a family name!

Although most of the tombs in this cemetery were in a grave (hehe) state of disrepair, I also saw many with flowers, candles, and other pretty recent offerings from the living.

This "Basilice Barbay" is listed as the "Consort of Christoval Toledano," which I found interesting so I did a Google search.  Basilice was Christoval's first wife, although it looks like Christoval married his second wife before Basilice died, so I don't know if they got divorced?  Maybe that was why she got relegated to "consort" on the tomb?  Christoval built his second wife a house on the Gulf in Biloxi, MS that was on the National Register of Historic Places until a casino barge washed ashore during Hurricane Katrina and smashed it to bits.

It's amazing how you can get lost on the internet with just a couple of searches...

This little tomb had a fenced yard and everything.  Even in the bright sun, it was on the creepy side.  I would have loved to have been here on a stormy day.

I tried to get a picture of a big black bird perched ominously on the head of this angel, but it flew away.  (The bird, not the angel.)

I loved wandering up and down these "streets."

On the outside looking in...

That was the end of my tour of the Garden District.  I was boiling hot and my feet hurt so I went into an air-conditioned book shop to browse for a while, and then had an iced mocha at a little coffeeshop, Still Perkin', before catching the streetcar back to my hotel.

On the way back, it became obvious that St Charles Street is a route for at least one of the Mardi Gras parades.  Trees, especially those in the median (called the Neutral Zone), were draped in beads.

Day Three in New Orleans

On Monday, our third day in New Orleans, Dan headed off to his first day of Microsoft TechEd and I was left to my own devices.  Nothing exciting though -- I ended up working all day from the hotel room.

In the evening when their sessions for the day were over, I met up with Dan and Kevan for dinner... at IHOP. Yes, International House of Pancakes.  :)  I guess you could call it comfort food, especially for nerds (we saw several others there.)

After dinner I insisted that we had to explore more of the city, so we turned down Bourbon Street.  I don't know what I can say about Bourbon Street that isn't probably already well known.  It's a party, fo'sho.  It was not until this point that I realized it's legal to walk about the city with an open container of alcohol (as long as it's not a glass container).  This means that basically everyone is carrying a drink, and basically every restaurant/bar will give you your drink in a plastic cup.  Or a giant plastic tube.  Or a plastic fishbowl.  I would say that at least 25 percent of the people walking around were noticeably impaired.  Who knows how many were hiding it better!

Bourbon Street was also wet, even though it hadn't rained.  There was water (or liquid, at least) running down the street in some places, and puddles in other places.  My assumption was that the street had to be regularly hosed down thanks to people peeing, vomiting, spilling their drinks, and doing whatever else.  I stepped into a puddle, wearing a sandal, and was thoroughly grossed out for the rest of the night just imagining what could have been in that mix.  Ugh.

So Bourbon Street was definitely interesting!

After a while we turned down another street, towards the river.  We ended up on Royal Street at the back side of the St Louis Cathedral.  The spotlight on the statue of Jesus cast a very cool shadow on the church.  I read that during Hurricane Katrina, an oak tree fell over in this courtyard and Jesus lost a thumb and a finger.  Can't tell if they have been replaced...

We walked back towards the hotel along Royal Street.  Most of its businesses seemed to be upscale antique  dealers and art galleries.  Since it was rather late, they were all closed (unlike the businesses on Bourbon Street, which were thriving!)  I had a good time window gazing, though.  At one art gallery I was happy to find many more pictures of the dog I had seen in the windows of the Sheraton on Canal Street.

Turns out, his name is (not a surprise) Blue Dog, and he is the creation of artist George Rodrigue.  Much of the art I saw in the various galleries was a similar style -- bright colors, black lines.  Maybe it is a Cajun thing.

Another really cool thing about the city is that there are real gaslights.  They are everywhere on the streets in the French Quarter.  It creates a very romantic feel, to stroll along with the gaslights flickering and street performers playing music.  We passed guitar players, harmonica players, saxophone players, and even a cello player.

Here's a pricey restaurant.

Dan and Kevan sighed every time I wanted to stop and look in a shop window, but they spent a good while peering into this antique guns and swords shop.  Hmmph.