Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Day 26 – French Quarter, New Orleans, LA

We are parked only about 3 blocks from the St. Louis Cemetery no. 1 and about 5 blocks from the French Quarter.  Many of the streets are lined with residences similar to this.

Of course there are also a large number of bars like this one.

We make our way down to the river and before getting on a city tour we stop at French Market.

On the tour, one of the first districts we visited had been flooded during the hurricane.  You can still see the markings on the front wall when evacuations were required.

Next we passed some of the older manor houses.  This one has a porch on the second floor.

We stopped at the botanical gardens.  You can see the Spanish moss growing on the trees.

Here’s Carmen taking a break on one of the bridges. 

The tour stopped at one of the cemeteries in the city.  Don’t remember which one, but it was still interesting.  All of the roads are named, just like a regular street.

Check out this walled vault.  Someone wanted to be buried under a pyramid. 

There were many unusual vaults in this cemetery; here is another of the vault streets.

Ha!  Check out this house.  After all it is almost Halloween.  You can tell the person that lives here is a Grateful Dead fan; they have a dead head in the front yard.

We drove by, but didn’t stop at, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.  This is where they filmed the cemetery scene in Easy Rider.

Check out this food truck we saw while driving around with the tour.

Standing next to the river at the Washington Artillery Park and Moonwalk and looking across Jackson Square at St. Louis Cathedral. 

We decided to go on one of the paddle wheel boats, in this case the Natchez. 

A couple of cargo ships, of some sort, getting loaded.  These are the Cape Knox (dock side) and Cape Kennedy out of Norfolk, VA.

One of the tankers loading coal from a barge tied up alongside and placing it into the ship.

I think they said this was a Domino sugar processing plant. 

We passed a coal barge coming our way.  I think it was headed to the cargo ship w saw earlier loading coal from a barge.

The Creole Queen passed by on our port side as we headed up stream. 

Back on land, we were walking around looking for some beignets when we came upon this man, yes I said a man, dressed in feathers.  I think he was practicing for Marti Gras. 

It is beginning to get dark and the bar and restaurant florescent lights are coming on.  You can see the first round one on the right is called the Funky Pirate.

We are still on Bourbon Street, just a little further down then before and you can see all of the neon lights all of the way up and down the street.

Check out the lighted skulls on the balcony above the Tricou Gifts shop. 


I wonder what they serve at this place.  Bet they serve Huge Ass Beers, along with your Big Ass Burger!

Tomorrow we are leaving New Orleans and we plan on making an early start, since again we have a long way, over 725 miles, to go.