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.