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: