Bourbon St New Orleans, about as Louisiana as it gets.....
19th-23rd November
Flew into New Orleans, losing another 2 hours, picked up a hire car, and found the Time Share unit we had booked. It was about an hours drive north from the city, so did some sightseeing from there, including a deep south plantation visit. I’m glad I wasn’t a slave in the good ol’ days, would not have been fun. A visit to the swamps on an airboat was a good day out, saw a few aligators in the wild, and a deer swimming across a channel through the swamp.There are about 2.5 million aligators in Louisiana, so the odds of seeing one in the wild were pretty good. They had an albino ‘gator in a pen, they are pretty rare, about 1 in 500,000, and they don’t survive in the wild long, so this is a lucky one. Tried Taco Bell for the first time, not bad, and fairly cheap, I see a few more visits in our future.
Flew into New Orleans, losing another 2 hours, picked up a hire car, and found the Time Share unit we had booked. It was about an hours drive north from the city, so did some sightseeing from there, including a deep south plantation visit. I’m glad I wasn’t a slave in the good ol’ days, would not have been fun. A visit to the swamps on an airboat was a good day out, saw a few aligators in the wild, and a deer swimming across a channel through the swamp.There are about 2.5 million aligators in Louisiana, so the odds of seeing one in the wild were pretty good. They had an albino ‘gator in a pen, they are pretty rare, about 1 in 500,000, and they don’t survive in the wild long, so this is a lucky one. Tried Taco Bell for the first time, not bad, and fairly cheap, I see a few more visits in our future.
The house on the plantation we visited, not a bad little weekender
View from the verandah, you can see why they called the place Oak Alley
The slaves didn't get it quite so good.....
An airboat similar to the one we went on, they are awesome things, I want one!
I don't think he was really happy we were so close.......
This little guy was about 2 years old.
24th-29th
We had booked an air BNB near the city for a while, but were not prepared for the neighbourhood when we drove into it, thinking surely this can’t be the place, looked like the ghettos in the cop shows on TV. It was walking distance from Bourbon St, and once we got our head around it, it wasn’t too bad. We had a couple of good nights in town, the music is what the city is all about after dark, and there was plenty of live bands in the pubs to make sure you don’t forget that. The buskers and street shows are awesome, well worth the time to watch them. We also did a few walking tours, including a visit to Lafayette Cemetery, also very interesting. The whole city is built on a swamp so the graves and crypts are above ground. The walls around the cemetery have sunk about 4 foot over the years, you can see the “hire vaults” in the bottom layers of the walls are almost below ground level now.
We had booked an air BNB near the city for a while, but were not prepared for the neighbourhood when we drove into it, thinking surely this can’t be the place, looked like the ghettos in the cop shows on TV. It was walking distance from Bourbon St, and once we got our head around it, it wasn’t too bad. We had a couple of good nights in town, the music is what the city is all about after dark, and there was plenty of live bands in the pubs to make sure you don’t forget that. The buskers and street shows are awesome, well worth the time to watch them. We also did a few walking tours, including a visit to Lafayette Cemetery, also very interesting. The whole city is built on a swamp so the graves and crypts are above ground. The walls around the cemetery have sunk about 4 foot over the years, you can see the “hire vaults” in the bottom layers of the walls are almost below ground level now.
View of the 'hood from our front verandah, not quite what we were expecting
Apparently this guy used to be able to sing and dance a bit...
Not sure I'd advertise this if it was me............
Must make it easy to get under and do oil changes?
Lyn, Crystal, and Trent on the street downtown
Paddlesteamer on the mighty Mississippi
Inside the WWII war museum, you could spend a whole day in here easily. Well worth the visit.
Crystal at the cemetery
House in the tree memorial for the floods from the 2005 hurricane
Typical "Shotgun" style houses, very common in older New Orleans houses. There used to be a tax on the size of the hallway in the houses, so they started building them with no hallways, you went into the front room, then through a door into the next room, and so on, with no hallways, so didn't have to pay any tax.
The Civil War Museum. We found it strange that all exhibits were of the southern armies, uniforms, etc, nothing at all of the North, no information, no exhibits, nothing. As if they didn't exist.
From here we were off to Dallas in a hire car, it was time for Crystal and Trent to fly back to Oz, and we had to pick up the bikes from the wharf in LA.
