New Orleans Cruise - Seeing the City and Mardi Gras

    Our cruise did not leave until Sunday so most of us decided to travel to New Orleans on Friday in order to have a day to see the city. My sister Terre (who lives in Indiana) and I drove down together. It's an 11 hour drive so we left at 3am in order to get there in time for dinner. Most of the group flew out of Green Bay, Wisconsin but one came from Las Vegas. A couple of my cousins could not come until Saturday.

Outside the Palace Cafe

    We all met up at our hotel, a Hampton Inn just west of Canal Street which borders the French Quarter. (For the sake of the older generation we wanted to stay away from all the craziness.) After settling into our rooms we made our way out to find a place to eat. We ended up at the Palace Cafe on Canal St. for an enjoyable dinner in elegant surroundings. After dinner a few of us wanted to check out Bourbon street but a sewer backup had the street flooded and smelling strongly of raw sewage. Needless to say we turned back and caught up to the rest of the group heading back to the hotel. So much for a night of revelry!

Damaged homes in the Lower Ninth Ward

     The next morning some of us had booked a Grayline tour of New Orleans so we headed off to the waterfront to catch our tour by the dock of the Steamer Natchez. Our tour was by bus and included driving through some of the areas of the city hard hit by Katrina as well as several other neighborhoods including the Garden District. It was sobering to see the amount of devastation still present even five years after the storm. Especially in the area of the Lower Ninth Ward the recovery is taking an agonizingly long time. One of the neighborhoods we toured has ground so damp the houses have huge poles beneath them for support. Every 20 years or so the poles have to be replaced because they rot. The streets and sidewalks buckle frequently and are constantly being fixed. Imagine the expense for all that! You have to marvel at human resiliance in the face of unrelenting nature.
.
.
.
.

St. Louis Cemetery

    One of our stops was St. Louis Cemetery. The graves in New Orleans are above ground. Our tour guide explained that the remains are placed in the upper level of a family crypt where they remain undisturbed for about a year. Due to the heat and humidity the body will have fully decomposed in that time. 

A family crypt

The crypt is then opened and the remains gathered into an urn or other container which is placed in the lower part of the crypt. That's why you see so many names on the graves. They even have crypts you can rent for that first year in case you don't have room in your own.

Mom after hitting the casino

     Our group disembarked the tour at Harrah's Casino in downtown for a rest break and something to drink. Now my Mother and her sisters are no strangers to casinos (in fact, my Aunt Grace works for one in Green Bay) and, of course, they had to check out the slots to see if they were any good. Okay I admit I had to try it out too. Nobody hit it big so we headed back up Canal street. We did some window shopping and hit a few souvenir stores before finding a place to eat some lunch. We knew that a Mardi Gras parade was scheduled to come down St. Charles Street to Canal so we chose a restaurant on St. Charles called the Pearl Oyster Bar. After eating lunch Mom chose to stay at the table where she could see the parade out the window. The rest of us including me, Terre, my sister Kathy and our Aunt Grace headed out to the street to stake out a place close to the rail. We were serious about getting some beads as they are tossed from the passing floats!

Photos from the Mardi Gras parade

   The last two of my cousins were due to be in before the parade but that day Chicago was experiencing heavy winds which was wreaking havoc on the flight schedules. They finally made it in about 8 hours late but in time to make our reservation at Emeril's Delmonico Steakhouse. What a lovely evening to cap off our whilrwind tour of New Orleans!