NOLA – Raina Travels

NOLA – New Orleans, Louisianna. N’awlins. NOLO.

5th November
Then off to the airport for my flight to New Orleans. When I was checking in and about to pay for luggage – about $65 – the computer asked me if I would like to upgrade to First class for $100. Took me about 7 seconds to hit the YES button. Nice seat, food, drink, luggage etc.
And the sites over the Gulf of Mexico were pretty fantastic.

The airport was very Jazzy. The Louis Armstrong Airport that is.

Then Uber to the hotel. The hotel is lovely. Right in the centre of the action and very nice.

For dinner I went to a bar nearby. The big footy match was on – THE big game. LSU (Louisiana State Uni v Arkansas. The bar was a footy bar. It had 15 TV around the walls – showing about 8 different sports channels. 4 of them, all different of THE game. And hundreds of screaming shouting people. Much fun. Dinner was great.

Then sleep.

6th November.
My hotel has the best bed! Amazing. Like sleeping on a cloud. So after a slow start I wandered around. Looked around the water front area.

Music is everywhere. Buskers. Musical play equipment.
Every food place. Even the paddle-steamer plates music from a huge pipe organ up on the roof. You just had to dance a jig as it was playing.

Then I found a Chinese massage place and had a very much overdue, and much appreciated massage. Yay.
Dinner at the Crazy Lobster – Cajun Shrimp for dinner of course.
Then a Paddle-steamer Jazz river trip. Lovely.

The blade parts on the wheel are as big as two sleepers next to each other. The paddle weight 55 ton. Ginormous.

What an amazing place this is. The locals are really friendly. And love to chat.

Amazing stuff everywhere you look. And the best place for people watching.
Great place.

6th November
A walk down to the riverside to meet up with my first tour. Down Canal Street various places were closed off for the filming of a movie – ‘Shock and Awe’. Milla Jovovich, James Marsden and Jessica Biel were filming.

New Orleans was founded in 1718, on the bend on the Mississippi, by the French. Then it was given to the Spanish, then back to the French. Then in 1803, the French sold 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River, to the US for $15 million. Pretty good deal. It doubled the size of the US. New Orleans was strictly a Catholic town.

It is a deep water port so very important. It was built on a grid pattern with all numbers starting at 100 at Canal Street. So if a building is number 626 it is six blocks from Canal St. The original part of the city is called the French Quarter. That’s where I’m staying.
The highest part of the city is….the river bank. The “sliver of river” is less then 5 metres above sea level. Half of the city is at sea level or below.

Mississippi river is 5,960 kilometres long. It is the watershed for 31 states and parts of Canada, and 42% of the water in the USA drains here. For a long time 75% of all the worlds cotton came from here. The city is set between the river and giant lakes.
First visit today was to the visitor centre were we saw a map of New Orleans then a map of where Hurricane Katrina flooded. I don’t know how anything is still here. The population is still nearly 100,000 people less then before it hit.

Saint Louis Cemetery No 1. Really interesting. It’s a crypt graveyard. For the first 100 years they buried underground but…..with no levies, poor drainage and frequent floods…there were often dead people floating around. So they started to put the coffin on the ground and build up tiers of brick or cement over the body. Then crypt became the fashion.

Marie Laveau (1794-1881) was a freeborn creole known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, and famous for her turban. Her crypt is haunted and people leave offerings for her hoping that she will give them a supernatural blessing. People make wishes, and if granted come back and mark the crypt with three X’s.

Voodoo came form Africa with the slaves, who on arrival where christened as catholics. Apparently Voodoo and Catholicism work well as a parallel?????? BUT the slaves did manage to keep their beliefs alive with help from the masters. Law meant they got Sunday afternoons off. Since none of the masters spoke African, they thought they were just singing and dancing, but in fact were practicing their Voodoo. (The voodoo they brought with them was not dark hexing religion).

Also saw the crypt of Homer Plessy – a man of colour who was the beginning of the Civil Rights movement when he defied segregation laws in 1892.

And a Jazz Musician crypt. When a musician dies, their funeral procession has a band marching behind he coffin. The band plays dirges, but then get into jazz. This large crypt is for all musician (who want to go there). A Jazz funeral is a common thing here.
And of the man who developed granulated sugar.

This is the future tomb of Nicolas Cage. Wacker.

After the tour I jumped onto the Streetcars and went out through the Garden District. The fancy rich area.

And then back to the river for my afternoon tour – swamp and bayou tour. We drove about an hour out of New Orleans into the Jean Lafitte Barataria Preserve for a boat trip. We saw lots of the flood levies and storm walls being build. This is where all the shrimp come from. So far I have had – boiled shrimp, Creaole shrimp, Pb Boy Shrimp, Shrimp Omelette…….

The trees covered in Spanish Moss were amazing. I loved it. In this area Hurricane Katrina hit with 150 MPH winds. After the trees did not have a leaf on them. And many had the bark stripped off!

Out here is where two of our common saying supposedly come from.
Spanish Moss hanging from the trees was used to stuff mattresses among other things. What they didn’t know was that 20 different biting bugs lived in the Spanish Moss – thus “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite”.

Yellow Fever took a savage toll on the population in 1853, killing 15% of the population. In the rush to dispose of bodies, some may have been buried while in a coma – so the string and bell method was used. Nuns would walk around the graveyard at night, listening for bells ringing in the crypts. They would do the “Graveyard shift”.

They had a few critters at the boat dock. The Turtle was fairly terrifying. Bigger then a car tyre. And a snapper. Probably eats more people then alligators do.

The boat trip was fun – but it started to rain. Really rain.

Then it rained. Really rained.

As we came back into town the rain really hit. My hotel is about a 15 minute walk to where the tours go from. I walked back through rain like I have never seen before. It was like Armageddon. All the drains were spewing water. Down pipes were shooting water up. The roads had 75mm of water on them. It was amazing. Talk about being wet. Lucky I had my bright orange poncho – to keep the good camera dry. But I did laugh the whole way. I poured water out of my shoes.

Probably will not be laughing in the morning when I put on my soaking wet shoes. My room looked like the Chinese laundry with things hanging up all around the air cond. I watched the weather channel and we got 6 inches in two hours! Cars were in water up to the doors.

So I had to miss my Ghost tour in the evening. It was still raining and the roads were a mess. And my shoes are very wet! I poured the water out then rung them out, then wrapped them it towels and trod on them for a long time. I didn’t want to go out walking in it again.

A fun day in New Orleans.

8th November – New Orleans
Today was a trip out to see some plantations. The drive was great.

In a different direction to yesterdays trip. This was out to the north west along the river, about 70 minutes out. There are now large levy banks all the way along the river. Huge mounds. Some places have walls built, but locals are worried that if water gets in in may take months for the parishes (counties) to pump it out.
Lots of interesting things – giant oil refineries, natural gas plants, nuclear plant. A prison that takes work gangs out and signs warning us to NOT pick up hitch hikers.
Small towns are quiet close together, and are the 1/4 acre block style.
Houses used in movies – this one, Seven Years a Slave.

When the land was divided up, it was done in long thin blocks from the river back to the swamps. All the houses were build a few hundred meters back from the river. I guess to be back from the floods and the mossies. Now the road is in, so the grand houses are up near the road. Great for tourists. We drove past plantations that were used in the filming of Django Unchained and of 12 Years a Slave.

Both the places we visited were and still are sugar cane plantations. Each had their own mills. The huge pots and for processing the cane juice into granulated sugar. A hugely dangerous task when down with an open fire, by candle light, with hand held dippers.

Whitney Plantation was the first we visited. It is the only plantation museum in Louisiana to focus on slaves. It has a number of memorials to the thousands of slaves from this district. The names of many of the slaves are on the memorials. That information was easy to get…as being possessions and valuable, excellent records were kept.

In the 1930’s the Federal Writer’ Project was launched. This project tracked down people who had been slaves prior to their emancipation in 1863. These people were all children when freed and were in their 60’s when the project happened. Statements were taken and used for many things. Many of the statements were put on the memorials. It as so sad!

A number of art works were commissioned, one being a series of sculptures of the children.

Some of the building are not the originals from this property. They are from neighbouring properties. Others are original.

We saw a ‘pen’ that slaves were kept in before auctions. Small metal or timber holding boxes – sometimes they were in them for weeks. This is where I was most effected. I felt physically sick and so ashamed of how disgusting the human race can be. It was like a smack in the head – these people were bought and sold, beaten and raped, the mules were regarded higher. And to make it worse it is still happening in part of the world.

Another art installation is a series of heads on pikes. After one uprising the men were all decapitated and their heads displayed at the entrance to each property along the roads.

The blacksmith shed was the site of the branding scene in ‘Django Unchained’.

Then up to the house – a French Creole raised style house. Built in 1803 and is the most important example of this style in the state. The plantation store is the only surviving French Creole barn in Louisiana. Amazing records were found showing how the newly emancipated people were cheated in ‘share cropping’. A law was passed saying a person could not leave a farm if they owed money, and the debt was transferable to any relative. They were charges huge amounts for goods and were not permitted to buy off farm.

The house had a lovely avenue of oak trees. Impressive.

Many of the original slave quarters also remain.

Oak Alley was next. Totally different. This one was all about the magnificent mansion. The mansion was amazing…but the grounds. Oh my. Nothing compared to the “Alley of Oakes”.

A 500 m alley of 28 oak trees planted in 1700. Equally spaced and 25 metres apart. Being native plants they thrived – and still are. In 1995 each tree was registered with the Live Oak Society. Each tree has a name. the Biggest, Josephine Armstrong Stewart has a girth of 10 metres and a 40 metre spread of limbs. HUGE! Stunning! Amazing!

Lunch was a local drink – Alcoholic Sundae. Unbelievable.

When I got back to town I went to look at Frenchman’s Street – the less touristy area, then walked back up Bourbon Street. Lots of stuff happening there. And of course music everywhere.