New Orleans, It's Been A Blast

All good things come to an end and so we must say adios amigo to The Big Easy.  We've had a wonderful time here and would love to stay on, in fact I think we would winter here if it was just a wee bit warmer.  Some sno birds do stay here but we want more heat.

Saturday afternoon we headed in to The French Quarter to see what kind of trouble we could get into.  It's not hard to get in trouble in the French Quarter.  We wandered around for a few hours, listening to all types of music, searching out that Jazz I love so much.  We took the opportunity to go into some of the old old hotels and other buildings just to see them.  All the new glitzy ones are there, a few blocks away, but there is nothing to compare to the history of these old ones.

At dinner we found some seafood at Pat Obrien's.  It doesn't sound like a New Orleans kind of place but it's history is actually quite amzing.  It was started by a fellow called Pat Obrien (surprise, surprise) during prohabition and it's been going ever since.  We had a great seafood dinner, watching their famous "Fire Fountain" before disappearing back onto Bourbon St and the Saturday night shenanigans.  We'll leave the shenanigans part alone and just say they were all there.

We walked around for a few hours until we were ready to collapse and headed home.  It was a fabulous day.

Sunday we started of at Cafe DuMonde where we enjoyed their famous French Beignets and Cafe au Lait.  This coffee house is about 150 years old and serves only Beignets and coffee.  Thats it.

http://www.cafedumonde.com/history.html

Then we did a Grey Line Tour that included The French Quarter, Cemeteries and Mansions.  I knew from a previous trip there were some big and some "Big Old" homes here but they are just plain amazing.  Some of these homes date back to the days of slavery.  The sizes just blew us away.  Bernie and I have seen some pretty spectacular real estate through our careers but the homes here are in a league all by themselves.  Our tour guide was really good at explaining the difference between Antebellum Architecture, the various Creole styles and of course "American" architecture.  It was awesome.

Then we were off to visit a cemetery to see New Orlean's own special way of dealing with their deceased.  We knew they bury the dead this way because of the high water table here but we were surprised to learn the method actually came from Spain.  Apparently that's the way it is in Spain so the Spanish just brought it with them when they came here.  French, Spanish, English, they've all had a run at New Orleans.  These crypts pass from generation to generation and only change hands when there are no more descendants.  It's rare but when they do change hands the top locations can draw prices into the seven digits.  Yup - a cool mill or more.

They can intern a new body every 365 days in each of these.

Some of these have dates back to early 1800's and have contained dozens of people.

Today we decided to take a drive "over" Lake Pontchartrain on the causeway.  We were surprised to learn that Lake Pontchartrain is one of the largest lakes in the US.  The Causeway is about 24 miles long and takes you from New Orleans on the S. to Mandeville on the N.  It's neat to watch the GPS showing the causeway and a sea of blue as we run the length of the bridge.  It is the longest continuouss bridge in the world.  There is a longer one in China but it comes down on land a time or two so it isn't continuous.  That leaves the Lake Ponchartrain causeway all by itself.  It was a great experience so we had lunch on the N Shore and drove back over it to the S and back to The Big Easy.

No stopping for pictures out here

Water on all sides, you can't see any land

Headed South to New Orleans

Miles and miles of just "Blue," neat experience.

Tomorrow we will be sad to leave New Orleans for Texas.  There is little doubt we'll be back here one day and we WILL be staying much longer.

Next post from somewhere in Texas.  Did you know that Texaracana is closer to Chicago than it is to El Paso?

Stay well, thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment when you can.

Neal