Advertisement
Published: November 8th 2010
Edit Blog Post
What a time we’ve had in New Orleans! New Orleans is definitely in my top 5 of favourite places that we’ve visited. The city has this incredible life and spirit that I haven’t felt in any other place we’ve visited here. The people are so friendly. All this in spite of the awful things that they’ve been through. It’s an amazing place.
The French Quarter is a beautiful spot to wander around. There are lovely old apartments that seem so typical of New Orleans, there are musicians and brass bands on every corner playing some of that old-time jazz, street performers everywhere and artists displaying their work (usually with Louisiana themes). One time when we walked through the French Quarter, there were two high school brass bands of at least 30 members each, duelling with each other as one band played a song and the other followed. Another time, we sat and watched four men do some amazing break dancing while doing a little comedy act with the crowd. There was just so much happening every way you turned. And we also sampled some famous New Orleans Beignet, fried bits of dough with copious amounts of icing sugar coating them
that was impossible not to get all over your clothing! Very yummy though! (The break dancing/comedy show was a real highlight, was absolutely hilarious! - Craig)
We very briefly stepped into Bourbon Street to have a look around, but left pretty quickly. When we went it was only about 5pm, but it was filled with very drunk, mostly older people (like 40-60 year olds!) stumbling between bars and being obnoxious. It was hideous! It was loud and busy with people crashing into you. We didn’t go back.
We did a three hour Hurricane Katrina tour, where we were driven through some of the neighbourhoods that we hit the worst and saw the recovery efforts still ongoing (or in many cases, hadn’t even begun). We learnt all about how the levees were made taller incorrectly (by the US Army Corps of Engineers no less!), which meant there were unable to withstand the hurricane-scale water levels and causing the devastating flooding. It was interesting, as I didn’t really know what had happened with Hurricane Katrina. I wrongly thought that it was the Mississippi River that flooded, but it was the storm surge of 25 feet of water from the Gulf
of Mexico that made it’s way into Lake Pontchartrain surrounding the city. This in turn flowed into the many canals built throughout New Orleans to drain the swamplands to make way for more land for people to live on. I didn’t know that is was so difficult to get rid of the water afterwards because most of the city is below sea level. And I didn’t realise that it had caused damage in 80% of the city’s houses and buildings. 80%!
Some buildings that we passed remained in ruin, still displaying the spray painted marks that rescuers used to mark that the house had been checked for survivors and bodies. Some houses were in the process of demolition. Some blocks were completely empty. Many houses were being rebuilt, and there were quite a few new houses around. It’s very sobering to see how affected the city continues to be by Hurricane Katrina, 5 years on. Some of the shops and hotels only reopened in the last year.
We also went to a Hurricane Katrina exhibition at the Louisiana State Museum, which was only opened in October of this year. It gave a very good overview of hurricanes, what
happened during Katrina and what the people of New Orleans went through, what happened afterwards and the continuing work to stop the same mistakes ever being made again.
Now onto some of the nicer things that we did! We went to Mardi Gras World, which is where they build all the floats for the annual Mardi Gras parades in February/early March. Craig’s such an idiot, he had no idea that there were floats and parades during Mardi Gras! He just thought it was a big, drunken party Girls Gone Wild style, with women flashing their boobs for men to throw beads at them. He was very impressed with the amazing work (and money!!) that goes into the floats. (Wow! Surprised me that I knew pretty much nothing about the real Mardi Gras, internet feeding me lies! - Craig)
We also went on a steamboat ride on the mighty Mississippi River. It was really cool being on a real steamboat, and we could walk into the engine room to see how it all worked. There was a guide pointing out all the places we passed, and even a jazz band playing. What an iconic thing to do, travel on
a steamboat on the Mississippi River!
Unfortunately I haven’t spotted any Twilight stars around Baton Rouge, despite driving past the studios quite a few times and searching all the faces in cars and walking around! Ah well, I didn’t really expect to anyway, but it would have been pretty cool! (We haven’t got arrested either, which I guess is a good thing - Craig)
While in New Orleans I caught up with Yanti and her husband Otto. I used to study nursing at La Trobe with Yanti, and she now lives in New Orleans with her American husband. They took us out to a cool little bar off the tourist path, it was really lovely to catch up with them & we had a great night!
Off to Houston, Texas tomorrow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0365s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb