Retired Nomads: New Orleans, Louisiana

Sep 23

We got tickets for the 3 day Hop On Hop Off Bus (HOHO) It included to guided walking tours and 1 self guided tour. In most cases the HOHO is a good way to learn interesting facts about a city as well transportation. It worked pretty well here.

the Visitor's center is in an old train station

Over the 3 days we had several different speakers so we got some different perspectives from each of them.

Something I had never thought about is the difference between a balcony and a gallery. Balconies and galleries are among the most beautiful features of the French Quarter.

" A BALCONY is a narrow platform projecting outwards from the wall of a building. Balconies, unlike galleries, are not supported by posts or columns reaching to the ground. A balcony can be small and boxy or stretch the length of the building.

A GALLERY is wider than a balcony. Most galleries overhang the width of the sidewalk, and are supported by posts or columns reaching to the ground."

We first drove past the city’s oldest cemetery (1789) which is a maze of tombs and crumbling bricks and it’s widely believed that voodoo queen Marie Laveau’s remains are here. Many old city VIP are interred here. The most famous recent addition is a controversial tomb (it's a pure white pyramid) that Nicholas Cage will be buried in when he passes.

It takes a guided tour to visit the very small cemetery. There are several types of tombs there.

Family Tombs are the most common type of grave. They look quite small, but family tombs can fit generations of family members all in that one space. The rule is that the space is "rented" for "one year and a day" which allows only one family member to be interred in the tomb during that span of time. If multiple people of the same family pass away within that time frame, the second family member will be then placed inside of a separate temporary tomb.

The walls surrounding the cemetery are actually Wall Vaults and they house the dead. (used especially when disease epidemics killed so many people at one time like yellow fever)

Society tombs are a merge of family tombs and wall vaults. While they look much like the former, multiple families and individuals are interred within like the latter. Over the centuries, society tombs housed the dead of those belonging to various organizations, such as religious groups, benevolent societies, clubs, law enforcement or fraternal societies. St. Louis Cemetery #1 contains many of such society tombs, including the French Mutual Benevolent Society, the New Orleans Musicians Tomb, and the Orleans Battalion of Artillery Tomb, among others.

Another interesting thing we learned is where the phrase "I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole" came from. Many believe this expression originates from a burial practice in New Orleans. The Spanish developed a burial system by first placing the casket of the patron in an above ground tomb. Exactly 1 year and 1 day after burial, the tomb is opened and the casket removed. The body is next wrapped in a sheet and shoved to the back of the tomb with a ten foot pole where it falls off the shelf to the bottom. The weather of the area caused the remains to decompose quickly and tombs are subsequently reused for many burials.

OK, that was probably way more information than you wanted to read about burial practices.

trolley

mural on a building

Superdome

homeless

waving to the people on the HOHO bus

ad for a local moving company

The Eiffel Society

In the 1930s a French businessman owned a restaurant that sat on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But it was too heavy and was actually causing parts of the famed tower to sink. The structure was removed and 11,000 pieces were shipped by boat to America.

The Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel started construction again in the 80s. The pieces of steel were assembled and now sits at the edge of the Garden District. Since the closing of Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, the structure has had many different managers and owners. Today it's called Eiffel Society and It's used for special events, weddings and parties and can hold up to 500 people.

Mardi Gras beads on the poles

Mardi Gras World where floats are made for parades

Mississippi River

Power Plant that is now a movie set

Katrina Tree - art made from the debris from Katrina

original Cajun Restaurant

We took the bus to the French Quarter and got off to take the guided walking tour. The walking tour of the French Quarter District was mediocre. I called it a standing tour. It covered only a couple of blocks and wasn't all that informative. It was only 45 minutes, so I guess you can't expect much.

walking tour of the French Quarter

Jackson Square

jazz band on a balcony - or is it a gallery?

St. Louis Cathedral - 1794

gas lights are everywhere

as part of the tour went into the garden area of the hotel

voodoo shop

even the horses hooves were painted purple

It was lunch time and despite the people on the HOHO asking about NOLAS (Emeril's restaurant) the guide said if you want some good Cajun food where locals go, he really likes The Gumbo Shop. It was on my list anyway, so we headed there. We were not disappointed.

Jambalaya

Gumbo

We walked around the area for a while and went inside the St. Louis Cathedral.

artists around Jackson Square

living statue

we went to the French Market and we stopped at a place that had "Praline shoe soles" which are a flaky pastry mixed with pralines and it was so good.

We then got back on the HOHO and rode it around to the Garden District for the other walking tour. We had 30 to 45 minutes to kill so we walked around until we came to a Crepe restaurant and we split a dessert crepe with Nutella & banana. Not the best crepe we ever had, but it was good. The service was slow; only one crêpier, and we nearly missed the tour.

Nutella & Banana crepe

We had a great guide and the tour was really great and covered a lot of ground. Interesting that the "Garden District" doesn't have many gardens left since land is such a premium, the gardens were sold off to they could build more houses. We saw the house that was used in the TV show American Horror Story. The current season is also being filmed there and the guide said that quite a few of the actors and crew where there filming.