New Orleans #6: St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

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Our last morning in New Orleans. Since we were starting our road trip today, we had plenty of free time, so decided to spend the morning in New Orleans, seeing one of the places that we hadn't visited yet. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest and most famous cemetery in New Orleans. Due to vandalism by some idiots, the cemetery cannot be visited by individual tourist, and instead people can only visit it on an organised tour. Why is it that the few always spoil it for the many. We had booked a tour the day before with Gray Line, their 'Cemetery and Voodoo Walking Tour', which was $20+. There are free walking tours, where you only have to pay the $2 entrance fee to the cemetery, but I think we left it too late to sign up for one of those. We headed down to the tour office, which was near the Mississippi River and got checked-in and onto the tour bus. We were given a small bag called a 'Gris-Gris' and our guide explained what it was. A 'Gris-Gris' is a Voodoo amulet, which originated in Africa and brings the holder good luck and/or protects them from evil. It is a small cloth bag/pouch and I think it was filled with herbs and maybe rice. I really need to dig mine out and open it up, but I fear that would bring me bad luck.

We drove for a little while to the old train station on Basin Street. There were some exhibits there for us to look around and of course some bathrooms to use. We stayed there for maybe twenty minutes, before walking over to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, which is just across the street. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is a Roman Catholic Cemetery, actually there are three St. Louis Cemeteries in New Orleans. This one opened in 1789 to replace St. Peter Cemetery as the main burial ground. The cemetery is where many famous citizens of the city were laid to rest. Our guide had warned us before entering about lingering around one of the most famous graves, that of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo priestess. I think the Catholic church get pissed off with people performing pagan rituals there, so the tour company strongly discourage it. Since the old cemetery (St Peter) was full, the new cemetery (this one) was to be built away from the city to stop the spread of contagion and disease.

We entered the cemetery. I was surprised at how small it felt. I don't know if it is because it is quite small or that the vaults make it feel more hemmed in as they tower upwards compared to the type of graveyards I am used to. One of the first vaults we visited was that of Marie Laveau. We could see the small offerings that people had left for her. Legend has it that if you draw and X on the the tomb, turn around three times, knock on the tomb and make a wish, Marie Laveau may grant it. The offerings are from people who have had their wishes successfully granted. I don't remember why, but most people seemed to leave hair grips. As we walked away from the tomb, I saw one party from our group lingering and saw them do some kind of Wicca thing. Our guide was very informative and as he led us around the cemetery, he pointed out the graves of famous New Orleanians and told us their history. The sky was such a beautiful shade of blue and it was a baking hot day, this had definitely been the hottest day of our trip so far. It was pretty humid, too. We walked in and out of the avenues of vaults. Some were well tended for, others were pretty decrepit. We saw Nicholas Cage's pyramid tomb, now that is a monstrosity! However, there were some gorgeous sculptures decorating other vaults and some beautiful metalwork/ironwork, too. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is for the burial of Roman Catholics, however there is a section at the back of the cemetery for Protestants, which don;t have vaults, but graves with headstones. There was a lot of restoration work going on, on some of the vaults. They had little signs on the front of them saying that they were undergoing restoration work. The signs really reminded me of the for sale signs estate agents put up outside of houses. Once the tour was over, we headed back to the bus at Basin Street Station and drove back to where we had started.

For our last meal in the city, we decided to head back to our favourite restaurant, Eat. It was located conveniently close to our Airbnb. Once again, everything on the menu looked good and it was hard to decide what we should have to eat. Since it was so hot outside, we ordered some unsweetened ice tea to slurp on to cool us down. The lunch menu is a little different to the dinner one if I remember correctly. We ordered three mains to share. I really wanted to try the crab BLT as I like crab and what is better than deep frying something. I enjoyed the crab BLT, but I don't think my friends were impressed. We also got chicken and dumplings, which were really nice. Our third main was chicken fried chicken. I find this a really strange concept how can you fry chicken in chicken? It is actually a fried breaded chicken breast. It was really good and probably very bad for you. Of course, we just had to get a bread pudding for dessert. It was delicious. I really would miss this pudding, it's one of the best desserts I have had in a long time and surprisingly for me it isn't a cheesecake or contains chocolate, which are normally my go to desserts. We eventually left the city, stopping to pick up a Mufuletta sandwich at one of the grocery stores, since we hadn't tried it and it was one of the must eats in New Orleans. Florida here we come!

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