Day 6 - Homeward Bound

New Orleans - As we headed out we asked the concierge for a walking map and ended up booking a three hour city tour which turned out to be a great idea. We headed to Cafe le Monde for breakfast, because that is what everyone does. The line was so ridiculously long and we had been there before that we walked down to the Market Cafe and had an all you can eat breakfast for $10 each along with New Orleans famous delicious coffee.


Our view as we had breakfast and listened to jazz.

Fortified we wandered around Jackson Square. Since it was Saturday the artists and performers were out displaying their wares.

A wedding was taking place in the square outside St. Louis Cathedral. This would be only one of several weddings we would encounter today. I will do a separate post on the wedding traditions.

We wandered in and out the many souvenir shops.

We stopped for a beer in the Crescent City Brewery where we had stopped twenty years ago. 
We sat at the bar and enjoying watching the oyster shucker.

Then we headed to our hotel to wait for our afternoon tour. David was our driver and guide and we made several stops at other hotels to pick up other passengers.

We did a tour of the downtown area. It was interesting that most of the buildings were abandoned before Katrina but were now being converted into hotels or condos.

The clarinet on the wall represents where jazz was first played.

We then drove through the Garden District which is full of individual majestic homes that cost upwards of a few million dollars.

Next stop was St. Louis # 3 graveyard where we left the bus and David explained about the style of burials and expressions like “being buried poor”. it reminded me of our visit last January to the cemetery in Granada Nicaragua. I will do a more detailed post on the cemetery at a later date.

We were then taken to the City Park which is bigger than Central Park in NYC. It was full of families enjoying the perfect weather and couples getting married. We tired the jambalaya at the Morning Call and then reboarded the bus.

As we drove to the Ninth District which was where Katrina did the most damage David provided the background. He showed us houses that still had the markings from the searchers.

The markings indicate that the house was searched on September 13, 2005 by the Western Texas ?   and the zero indicates no bodies were found.

In the lower 9^th district he showed us the work being done by the Brad Pitt foundation.

On the way back we drove down Magazine which has six miles of shopping. That will be on my next agenda.

Most of the hotels along Canal Street used to be department stores. The Ritz Carlton still has its sign showing it was a 5 and 10 store.

We opted to leave the tour at the market and did some shopping. Most of the touristy stuff that is sold in the stores can be found here for a couple of dollars less.

For dinner we strolled along Bourbon St. and ate at Tony Moran's an order of lamb chops and veal.

More strolling and a stop for a glass of wine in the shadows of the cathedral was a perfect ending to the day.