New Orleans is known for music, drinking, dancing and gambling but we also found amazing food, beautiful architecture and got a glimpse of the Katrina devastation that still lingers on.
New Orleans has great food too! We really enjoyed some local specialties like beignets and cafe au lait.
Jason tries alligator and crawfish cheese cake - yum!
Jason demonstrates crawfish eating technique. First, break it in half.
Eat the yummy meat from the back portion.
Then suck out its brains. Yum!
There's more to New Orleans than food and drink. We took the St. Charles St Trolley to check out the Garden District.It is filled with beautiful homes.
Many homes have beautiful iron work.
Anne Rice's former home combines both columns and iron work.
Lafayette Cemetery is also found in the Garden District.
Mausoleums can only be opened a year and a day after they were last opened. New additions are placed on the top shelf while the former top shelf occupants are cremated and moved to the bottom.
The French Quarter has lots of neat homes too...
...and balconies for throwing beads....
...and good examples of local patriotism...
...beautiful courtyards...
...the Cornstalk Fence Hotel... ...each kernel is visible...now that's good iron work.
...beautiful churches like this cathedral...
...and the steamboat Natchez. Jason used his birthday gift from Marianna's dad to enjoy a riverboat cruise complete with lunch! Thanks Dad!
It easy to see why New Orleans had a massive flood when you cruise down the river and see that many neighbourhoods and industrial areas are 14 feet below the Mississippi River!!! Katrina caused the dam to break and both the river and the lake swamped the city. The reason it stayed flooded for so long is that the city is below sea level. That means the levees needed to be fixed before the water could be pumped out. If the water wasn't pumped out it would have stayed forever.
This picture shows that an example of damaged facilities that are still left in ruins. This use to be part of a docking facility. From our camp site we could hear them banging away still making repairs to the levees.
Outside the tourist areas there are still many buildings boarded up. Check out the garage door of this house. It still has the rescue team's symbol on it. The Symbol shows the date inspected, person who inspected it and how many people or bodies were found. This is an example of a good house, some houses look like they did the day after the flood - with mud and furniture still inside whlie others are just gone...all that left is a cement pad.
This picture shows a whole school left damaged and unused. New Orleans population before Katrina was 500,000....today it stands at about 225,000....more than half of the citizens and small businesses never came back.
So many things to see; things to enjoy and things to be humbled by…after five nights in New Orleans we decided we were either staying forever or getting on with our adventure. Next up…Galveston/Houston, TX.