I have said it before and I need to repeat it here again. This will be a difficult blog post for me to do as there is so much to tell you about New Orleans. “The Big Easy” won’t be so easy to write about. Even Tennessee Williams couldn’t do it justice. But I’ll give it a shot. The photos will not be chronological as I usually do but I’ll try to group them in similar galleries. It’s a big post with several videos as well so enjoy.
On the route we had taken we found ourselves crossing 2 state borders in a matter of an hour. We had left Mobile Alabama, driven through Biloxi, Mississippi then in to New Orleans, Louisiana. This is why locals we talk to can’t believe that we drive 15 hours from Townsville and we are still in the same state. We had planned 5 or 6 days in NOLA (that’s what the locals call New Orleans) but when we were offered a 7th night free if we paid for 6 then it only took a moment to say OK. Our RV Park (Pontchartrain Landing RV Park) is one of the closer parks to the city and it has a wide variety of accommodation ranging from floating villas (houseboats), units, mobile homes and RV sites. It also has a top restaurant and bar (“the Lighthouse Bar”) onsite next to the pool. Right across the canal from us was a river boat steamer undergoing a renovation. The French Quarter (for which NOLA is famous) is only a 15 minute drive away or $6 on the park shuttle bus.
Next morning we caught the shuttle into town and started the day with a NOLA ‘staple’ from a NOLA institution. Café Du Monde has been serving beignets since 1862 and at times the queue to get in is long. From there we wandered along the street to the French Markets which has a terrific range of items for sale mostly from local artisans. Doubling back towards the heart of the French Quarter you notice musicians and street performers are everywhere (see a video here and here).Looking across Jackson Square you can see the oldest continuously practicing catholic church in America. In a relatively small area of 13 blocks by 7 blocks the French Quarter is wonderful, eye opening, mind boggling fun. At one candy store I found my Bundaberg Ginger Beer but as you can see in the photos they had hundreds of brands. On one trip we found ourselves in another NOLA institution, Pat O’Briens Irish Pub singing along to sets of two piano players. Shane even had a “Hurricane” rum drink. In any case there are lots of ways of getting about besides walking in New Orleans. There’s horse and buggy, motor bike, trolley cars and even 3 wheel whatever’s. (Told it would be a big post.)
Anyway this next gallery is full of pics that we (mainly Shane) took of various houses built in the Louisiana style. Some are Georgian. Some are Greek Revival style. All are NOLA style. Don’t be fooled by the perspective of the panorama shots. New Orleans is constructed in a grid pattern (despite being known as the ‘Crescent City’) so finding your way around isn’t too tough. The “Superdome” is the same one that you may remember from 13 years ago (almost to the day) when Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast here and caused so much destruction. Today it looks, well, ‘super’ again. The next dozen or so photos are random shots taken around the famous French Quarter. Then there’s N.O. number 1 cemetery. It’s one standard square city block yet it inters over 50,000 people there. The stories we heard about cemeteries and voodoo piqued our interest enough to take a self guided tour of another of the towns cemeteries but more on that later.
The two pics after that are what are known as “Shotgun Houses” for conflicting reasons I won’t go into for brevity. The Yellow house is a single, the orange is a double. They are just 12 feet wide (24 for the double) and have a passageway straight through the house for ventilation (or firing a shotgun as the legend goes). The plinth you see in the next pic was internationally reported on recently as some politically correct fools forced the city to take down a century plus statue of General Robert E Lee because the ‘South’ lost the war and it offended someone. Seriously! The final shots are again various buildings from about the city (mostly taken from the top of the hop-on hop-off bus or the ferry that we rode across the Mississippi on). I included a close up of one wrought iron fence just to show it in some detail. Beautiful work.
This next gallery is for the historians. I’ll not make many comments at all. The first two pics are of the Number 1 Cemetery taken from the roof of the HO HO bus. The next 2 show the pamphlet that came with the free self-guided walk through the Lafayette Cemetery (it is still in NOLA but is named Lafayette). I suggest opening these two photos in a new window then opening the cemetery photos separately. Some photos are labelled and you can read all about them from the first two pics. In a city where voodoo is still practised and due to the ground being below nearby sea levels (which forced coffins to often rise and float away) it is a very interesting walk.
Now you’ve seen the rest you can look at the best. We had a night out (much overdue) in the Big Easy that was exactly what New Orleans is about. The first 5 pics were of a ‘scouting’ outing where we looked about to see what was available. On our 2nd last night in NOLA we had booked an evening dinner/jazz cruise aboard the Natchez, https://www.steamboatnatchez.com/ the last rear paddle steamer. We arrived at 5:30pm and had booked the 6pm meal. This way we could enjoy our meal before we cast off so we could enjoy the entire cruise up the Mississippi. I have posted a video of the calliope playing aloft on the Natchez.
As the Creole Queen (a cheap replica!) sailed by we wined and dined our early night away. The buffet was loaded with a local menu and there was plenty of it. It’s called a Jazz cruise for a reason. Natchez hosts the “Dukes of Dixieland”, a great jazz band who entertained us with many hits we all knew. My favorite was “When the Saints come marching in” as you’ll see in the video.
We returned to the pier around 9pm which is far too early to go home in New Orleans so we walked (along with most from the cruise) up Toulouse Street to Bourbon Street where it all happens. We didn’t take a lot of photos during this night as we had lots of shots of Bourbon St interlaced throughout the other galleries. Walking along the street your ears are assaulted by a cacophony of music of many styles. Blues, Jazz, Mountain, Country, Rock, it’s all there and more. We first chose a bar called “Big Ass Beer” (I think?) where there was a fantastic band, Good Vybez Band (Video included here). Further up the road we stopped at an outdoor venue where the Blues was the flavour. They even sang a Blues version of Waltzing Matilda for us (see the video). We visited a few more bars before we ended up back at the Big Ass Beer Bar to watch Good Vybez finish up the night. By the time we got back to our Van at 2am we were pretty stuffed. It was a big day which I’d do again in a heartbeat.
Well that’s it for my biggest post yet. I could easily have gone on as NOLA has heaps to experience and really the only way to get the full essence of New Orleans is to go there. We are currently at Jackson, Mississippi (an easily forgettable place) where we will finally leave the Natchez Trace Parkway. My next post will be on the Parkway because it is one of America’s great drives and we almost completed the entire 446 miles from Nashville to Natchez.
So I will leave it at that. Watch for the next post and enjoy my ravings. (You can comment on the bottom of the blog if you wish)
Cheers for now
Garry & Shane.