15 January – New Orleans

Today was our 12^th wedding anniversary!

The shuttle bus from the RV park was great. We drove down St Charles Avenue, full of wonderful “Gone with the Wind” style homes, with ornate architecture and white columns. The driver was very knowledgeable and gave us lots of useful and interesting info.

Being a Sunday the French Quarter was quiet in the morning so we walked the streets soaking in the atmosphere and admiring the buildings. The French Quarter is a crazy juxtaposition of very overdone touristy, with the beauty and calm of first class restaurants and shops. Tourist trinkets and cheap t-shirts are sold next door to high end antiques. Pubs have windows to the street where they sell takeaway drinks to go to the rowdy crowds, and in an alley a few steps away is the doorway to a white tableclothed, silver service restaurant. Jazz bands play on street corners opposite con artists fleecing people out of a couple of dollars.

We dropped into St Louis Cathedral for a look, but Mass was underway so we didn’t stay long. Outside a bagpiper was marching up and down playing, when a 3 piece jazz band struck up a tune from a nearby balcony. The piper marched directly underneath them and we were subjected to a very loud play off that the piper eventually conceded.  

A leisurely coffee and then we hopped a tour bus for a tour of the wider city. First stop was one of the cemeteries where we were able to look around at the above ground tombs. Because New Orleans is built over a swamp graves would flood with water as they are being dug, so the solution is the above ground tombs. The tombs can hold from 2 to many coffins, and when they are full the oldest coffins are removed, the remains are re-interred in a crypt under the tomb, so they can fit in the newly deceased. If several members of a family pass within a short time of each other, you can rent space at a funeral home for the extra coffins until 1 year and 1 day has passed since the most recent burial. So a tomb may have many names on it, but only room for 2 coffins – all the others are piled into the crypt. Tombs can cost tens of thousands, depending on the construction.

Next stop was the City Park, with its famous sculpture garden.

Back on the bus for a trip past the canal that was one of the reason New Orleans flooded so badly during Hurricane Katrina. The storm water system banked up because of the storm surge preventing it from draining into the estuary, and the water spilled over into the city. As a larger part of New Orleans is below sea level, the flooding was devastating.

In the afternoon we went on a cocktail walking tour. Apparently cocktails were invented in New Orleans, and the walking tour was a historical tour based around the famous cocktails and the establishments that invented them.

First stop was the famous restaurant Antoine’s, the birthplace of Oysters Rockefeller and also the Sazerac - New Orleans oldest cock tail, from the 18 40’s. Sazerac Rye Whiskey, sugar, and New Orleans’ own Peychaud’s Bitters. We toured the restaurant, with a fabulous history and such interesting stories.

Then we went to The Court of Two Sisters for a Bayou Blast, essentially a red wine and fruit juice mix, then the Absinthe House for a Green Fairy (Not nice) and finally to 2 Jacks for a Grasshopper.

We were booked for dinner at the Court of Two Sisters, so we headed back there. We were seated in the courtyard under a massive wisteria woven with fairy lights. The meals were lovely.