New Orleans road trip - Day 10 - New Orleans

We caught the campsite shuttle downtown again with Greg getting off at the WW2 museum.

Aimee and I started our day at Cafe Beignet with cafe au lait and beignet. These are square deep fried doughnuts smothered with icing sugar (supposed to be a "dusting" of the sugar but our beignets were literally buried in about 1/2 lb of sugar).

Here, you place your order, get your coffee and wait for your beignets to be made fresh. All the seats at tables were full so we sat at the bar. We got into a discussion with the bartender about some of the alcohol being served and she highly recommended the Southern Comfort Mango Margarita. We declined, not having the staying power we used to have, so she gave us each a small sample. Alcoholic candy in a cup! We would have been under the table in no time flat!

Our 3 day Hop on Hop off bus pass also gave us 2 walking tours, so we took the French Quarter tour today. We learned that women could own and sell property in French New Orleans and the apartment buildings built on either side of Jackson Square were built by an enterprising woman who also saw to the conversion of the square from a parade ground to the garden it is today.

Pirates alley lead directly up from the river and the pirates were welcomed for the variety of their wares.

A "balcony" sticks out from the house with no supports (sometimes brackets) and is narrow. A "gallery" is supported by pillars below and reaches to the edge of the sidewalk. Sometimes the support posts are ringed with spike. These may be to stop prospective suitors of the girls living in the apartments above or to stop people climbing the posts to view mardi gras parades form the galleries.

In Louisiana haunting is accepted as a pre-existing condition of a house and has to be declared in a real estate transaction. We saw real estate signs that declared "haunted" or "not haunted". Supposedly Johnny Depp's house in the French Quarter is haunted. Sandra Bullock owns a house in New Orleans, Nicolas Gage had his 3 homes here confiscated to pay his taxes and Brad Pitt just sold his. See what you can learn on a walking tour.

These little metal discs are in the sidewalks everywhere. They cover termite bait.There is a non-native termite that eats cement and it has been destroying the foundations of homes (they will suddenly collapse).

After the walking tour we went into the museum next to the cathedral to see the exhibit on Katrina.

This was an emotionally draining experience. New Orleans has experienced many hurricanes and has gradually built up its defenses. But it has also continued to grow, population has increased and the levee system is not just along the Mississippi River but also along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain and the various shipping canals that cross between the 2. There are hundreds of mile of levees. Much of the occupied land is below, at or just above sea level. The exhibit was excellent, taking the viewer through the lead up to the hurricane, the prep, the evacuation and all the difficulties; broken levees, trapped citizens, heart stopping video of the water rapidly reaching roof height and people trapped in their attics and on their roofs, 35,000 evacuees in the Superdome with no power, no water, no toilets, no food for days, the same at the Convention Centre with the addition of armed robbers there. The aftermath; slow response with aid, inadequate and unequal funding, assessments of why the levees breached and the gradual return to normalcy. The videos of the survivors talking about the impact on their lives was stirring. Wikipedia indicates that about 2,000 people died but we heard estimates of between 4, 000 and 10,000 form different tour guides. Many have not returned to the section that was totally destroyed.

Upstairs there was an exhibit about Mardi Gras with the history, costumes,

accessories, masked balls, traditions and innovations. This town knows how to party!

Next we had planned to go to the Fromage festival at the old mint. When we got there we discovered it was $30 to get in and that gave you free cheese samples and music. We couldn't imagine eating $30 worth of cheese (nor would it have been good for us) so instead we ate from  this food truck - french fries, drizzled with truffle oil and topped with freshly grated Parmesan.

Then we walked through the French Quarter,

gradually getting further away from the river with its bars, restaurants, shops, street musicians and buskers

until we were into the quieter, residential part of the French Quarter. Lots of Creole cottages and Shotgun houses were for sale. Brightly coloured due to the Caribbean influence. When Napoleon was unable to put down a slave rebellion in Haiti there was mass immigration from there to New Orleans bringing colourful homes, Caribbean foods and Voodoo. The Creole culture has so many influences; French, Native American, Spanish, German, Haitian, African and American. Although all are now American, in New Orleans, the "Americans" are considered to have arrived after the Louisiana Purchase and were not made welcome.

I love just wandering and coming across interesting things.

We had noticed yesterday what we thought were electric lights made to look like old gas lights. Today we learned that gas comes out of the ground here and is cheaper that electricity, so many of the lights are gas and burn all day and night.

The French Quarter is 6 by 12 blocks and is the original city, built on the highest ground and not flooded by Katrina. We walked the 6 blocks and then caught the Hop on Hop off for a while

then caught a street car to take us back to Cafe Beignets. Aimee and Greg's son, Chuck,  was in town for a "guys weekend" to see the football game and we had arranged to meet up with them. Greg had been at the WW2 museum all day and raved about it.

We all stood in line, across for the Voodoo store, and had a couple of drinks

while waiting for the show at Preservation Hall.

No video, because it wasn't allowed. The last time I came to New Orleans I think I was about 21 and I was with my family. Dad loves jazz and we came to Preservation Hall. It looked just the same; run down. wooden benches, hot, stuffy and oozing jazz history. I didn't appreciate it then. Now I quite like jazz and the show was fabulous. A couple of musicians dropped in and departed during the 45 minutes. There was a real sense that they were enjoying what they were doing and there was pride, competitiveness, mentoring and interaction with the audience. 2 percussionists, 1 sax, 1 trumpet and vocals, 3 trombones (one of whom was also a vocalist) and it was music you couldn't sit still too. I loved it.

Aimee after a few. It might have been on Bourbon Street (they are all party streets after 5). You can buy a drink and then walk out of the bar and carry it around with you.

We stopped for supper here

I had the Jambalaya and it was delicious. Chuck and his friends had gone on a swamp tour that day - enjoyed the speed of the air boat and being in the swamps but only had distant, fleeting sightings of alligators. Chuck arranged an Uber and we were driven home.