New Orleans City Tour

I just flew back home today from New Orleans. It is such a great city, I’m already trying to figure out when I can go back. There is so much more there I need to do!

This will end up being a series of posts, because I just had too much going on there, I don’t want to compress it into one post. So prepare yourself, as it’s about to get really New Orleans-y in here.

I started on the first day with a tour of the city. The architecture in the French Quarter is stunning, but I’m planning to discuss the French Quarter in another post, so I won’t dwell on it.

Old cathedral, but don’t believe the hype, it’s not the super oldest, as it’s been demolished a few times and rebuilt. So it gets off on a technicality, the best kind of way to get off.

The tour then moved onto to the 9th Ward, which is where Katrina flooding hit the hardest. As you may imagine, much of their history is now intertwined with Katrina, it effected life greatly there. We viewed the Upper 9th ward, as the Lower 9th ward is so bad, they banned tours from going in there, feeling that it exploited the suffering of the families that lived there.

A house being rebuilt.

There’s still many houses there that are either in the process of being rebuilt, or haven’t been rebuilt at all. Since many of these houses had been in families for so long, the mortgages had been paid off and thus there was no requirement for them to have homeowner’s insurance. With no insurance, they had no money to repair the house. The city decided to allow all Katrina damaged houses to be allowed to remain in their damaged condition, as long as they were stripped to the studs on the inside so as not to promote mold growth.

This house doesn’t look very damaged, but it also hasn’t been repaired yet. On the door’s left side you can see the marking the rescuers made indicating the house had been searched, and how many bodies were found. On this particular house, none were found.

Our next stop was a cemetery. Here, everyone is buried above ground due to the water table. If they were buried in the standard way, the bodies would come floating back up. In an area with a history of yellow fever and other contagious diseases, this is not good.

The *cough*attractive*cough* tour guide explained how generations of families can be buried in the same tomb. Basically comes down to stuffing them in a big hole.

Here I am! I like this photo because it can be multipurpose. If I choose this graveyard to haunt upon my death, photoshop will make me look all ghostly and then everyone could be, Look! it’s a ghost haunting the cemetery!

We moved on from there and briefly stopped at botanical garden that I do not remember the name of. I will have to check it out again next time I come down.

The Museum of Unknown History and/or Science. I named it myself.

Living Oak with Spanish moss. Fun fact, Spanish moss is full of micro-organisms that will make your arms break out if you carry it around. My coworker told me she learned this the hard way.

A pond with no apparent alligators.

I think this was the only “Art” that wasn’t a naked person.

Next up was the Garden District, which we were barely in. Basically, it’s the rich people area. The houses are elaborate, have a bit of yard, and the streets are wide.

The trolley line is in the foreground.

My favorite part was the trees. Mardi Gras festivities runs past this area and the tradition is to leave the beads in the trees all year.

If you plant Mardi Gras beads in the ground, eventually you will get this specimen of tree.

That’s the end of the general tour. Upcoming, the French Quarter, a Haunted Tour, and insects!