NOLA: Day Six

Tuesday, November 10

Today was our last day in New Orleans, but we managed to squeeze in some last minute sightseeing.

711 Royal Street, where Truman Capote wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms. 

The Jean Lafitte French Quarter Visitor Center -- a good place to have gone first rather than last!

The Hermann-Grima House, an 1831 townhouse. Our tour guide provided us with much detail about life among the wealthy in the 19th century French Quarter.

Thus ended our sojourn in the legendary vieux carre. Not with a bang but a whimper, a very charming whimper. This was a life-altering experience for me, comparable only to my first trip to New York. A fork in the river? We shall see.

NOLA: Day Five

Monday, November 9

After breakfast at the Deja Vu Bar and Grill  we took a ride on the paddlewheel steamboat the Creole Queen to the nearby town of Chalmette to visit the site of the Battle of New Orleans, where many of my ancestors and relatives fought against the British with Andrew Jackson in 1815. Along the way, we also photographed the larger steamboat Natchez which was steaming up and down the river at the same time.

Unaccountably I somehow managed to look like this BEFORE drinking the Hurricanes

The Marchioness was much amused by this history geek, who didn't appear to be an official part of the tour but was dressed like a 19th century pirate nonetheless

St Louis Cathedral as seen from the Mississippi River

Paddle Wheel as seen from inside the boat:

The battlefield.

The Chalmette Monument.

Your correspondent. I was actually hoping to look somewhat less like Mr. Bean.

Like the gator in our last post, I needed to see a tree with Spanish moss, and I finally got one.

On our trip back, our tour brilliant tour guide Charles, a true poet, told the story of Hurricane Katrina. Along the way, he pointed out this high school in the 9th ward, which still has protective roof covering ten years after the event

The steamboat Natchez from the Creole Queen:

After dinner, we went to Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, one of the oldest buildings in the city (1740s) and today a popular bar. If I lived here I would be there all the time.

This being our last night we allowed ourselves something resembling the alcohol consumption that everyone around us was indulging in. The night grew trippy and surreal -- and still we somehow managed to stop ourselves well short of getting ill....the true sign of an old fogey.

Then we finally had a peek at Reverend Zombie's House of Voodoo

This being our last night there we lingered long to hear the street musicians, in this case an outfit calling themselves Death in the Evening:

NOLA: Day Four

Sunday, November 8

On my birthday we took the romantic St. Charles street car to the Garden District, our first proper jaunt way out of the French Quarter. Along the way we passed Lee Circle with its monument to the Civil War general:

The Garden District is part of what was known as the American Quarter and is full of grand ante-bellum Greek Revival mansions and later Victorian ones. One of them was occupied for many years by the author Anne Rice. We paid it a visit.

Jut a few blocks away is the Lafayette Cemetery -- where many of Rice's vampire tales have been laid.

Then we walked down Magazine Street towards the waterfront to Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, the warehouse and studio of the folks who fabricate all the parade floats for Mardis Gras. We were strongly encouraged to enter by Slutty Jester:

After lunch at the Gumbo Pot (and an unavoidable football game on the television -- it was sunday after all) we proceeded to the Aquarium of the Americas, where I was determined to finally see a gator.

In which I contemplate the big fish

Good thing the Marchioness had bird seed in her sleeve

Got my gator! He was sleeping in a really weird position . He reminded me a great deal of a relative of his I saw earlier at Musee Conti:

Because of our late lunch, we had little appetite left for dinner, so we went in search of birthday dessert. We wound up at Tony Moran's an Italian place above Jean Lafitte's Absinthe joint...where I had absinthe and bread pudding.

And took a picture of Bourbon Street out the window.

The wonderful band Eight Dice Cloth:

NOLA: Day Three

Saturday, November 7

Snuck out early again and had a chance to snap a few additional sites. First to the perfectly harmless looking Pirate's Alley (which apparently has nothing to with the Lafitte Brothers but is associated with them anyway), but is the site where William Faulkner wrote his first novel (it's now a bookstore).

And yet another Tennessee Williams house.

And a closer shot of the Andrew Jackson statue in Jackson Square. Jackson was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, fought six miles away in Chalmette (and which several of my ancestors and relatives participated in. Stay tuned for a visit to the battlefield).

Then, joined by the Mad Marchioness, we toured the Historic New Orleans Collections with all their paintings and artifacts, and their new exhibition of Rolland Golden's Katrina related paintings:

Then the Cabildo , St. Louis Cathedral, and The Presbytère. All in a row, it's easy to see them all at once like one large museum (though the one in the middle happens to be a house of worship). The Cabildo was the seat of government during the colonial period.

The Cabildo had great exhibitions on the Battle of New Orleans, in which the Marchioness and I both dramatically participated:

And an equally terrific Civil War exhibition (New Orleans was occupied by Union forces for most of the war.)There was also an intriguing portrait by William Rumpler, purportedly of Adah Isaacs Menken, subject of Horse Play, although it looks nothing like any of the photos of her. 

Here is the interior of the Cathedral.

Fats Domino's piano -- destroyed in the flood

The Presbytère has a terrific, moving exhibition about Hurricane Katrina, covering it from every angle. It's sensitively handled, and comparable to New York's 9-11 museum.

The famous "Doreen's Jazz New Orleans" -- we saw them busking almost every day

Thence to the Beauregarde-Keyes House, an 1826 American-style house (unique in the French Quarter, where so many of the buildings are Spanish). We were surprised to learn that the house's connection to General P.G.T. Beauregard is nearly tangential. It wasn't his personal home. When he was destitute following the Civil War, he lived there for a year and half when it was a boarding house. After this it was the home of author Frances Parkinson Keyes (pronounced "Kize"), best known for her murder mystery Dinner at Antoine's. If you like creepy dolls, you will love this museum. The house was built on land originally owned by the Old Ursuline Convent, which is now across the street. The convent, built in the late 1740s, is currently the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley:

It was raining by this point. We wended our way home by way of the terrific galleries on Royal Street, at least 6 or 8 of which got us totally jazzed.

But the drizzle was cramping our style so we made it back to the hotel. And the show came to us! Out our window, we saw (and heard) a wedding party "second line" go by, in the pouring rain, full of joyful shouts and music. This town really knows how to celebrate.