Blogs from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, North America - page 8

La Nouvelle Orléans, ville du Jazz, de la musique. Ville de Louis Armstrong sur le bord du Mississipi. C'est aussi la ville du Mardi Gras, des masques et des colliers à billes colorées! En résumé, il y a toujours un festival et toujours beaucoup de touristes! Les prix sont élevés: une visite à pied du centre-ville coûte $20/pers., visite des bayous ou des plantations $50/pers...décidément on sera nos propres guides!... read more

On my way to New Orleans I had a stopover in Shreveport as New Orleans was too far to travel in one day. New Orleans was an amazing time and I may need to re-visit it some day. Probably not during Mardi Gras but December was a really nice time to visit. I took a drive along the great river road and visited two plantations. The first was Laura Plantation which was a Creole plantation and which was my favorite. It isn't real fancy but it shows what it was like back in the early 1800s when it was built. There are 12 historic buildings, gardens, banana grove, and the slave quarters where the African folk tales of Brier Rabbit was recorded. The second plantation was Oak Alley Plantation completed in 1839 after three years of ... read more

Geo: 29.9498, -90.0769Morning flight to New Orleans.Tucked in below Lake Pontchartrain with the Mississippi delta to the east and south, New Orleans (nicknamed "The Big Easy" or NOLA) has little land suitable for building. What is available is very low lying, with an average elevation below sea level. In earlier times NOLA was one of the most important US cities but it has been in decline (relative to other US cities) since the 1860s, and in absolute decline since 1960. Apparently the population has almost returned to its 2005 pre-Katrina level of 400,000 (1.2M in the wider metro area).New Orleans was French from 1718 until 1763, when it was ceded to Spain. Napoleon took it back in 1800 but then sold it to the US as part of the 'Louisiana Purchase' in 1803. He used the ... read more

Day 12 New Orleans Last full day in New Orleans ! Firstly we headed down to cafe du monde a famous breakfast place in the city that specialises in coffee and doughnuts, so that's what we had ! We had no real plans for today, we had seen most of what we wanted so we just headed downtown to buy a few bits and pieces ! It was another hot hot day so walking about was hard work. On our way back we went for a walk through Louis Armstrong park which was nice but too bloody hot. So once we got what we needed we headed back to the hotel for a last bit of US sunshine ! We half packed up and headed out down the usual for a spot of Grub a huge ... read more

Day 10 New Orleans We got some gas as we left Vicksburg and we headed south to New Orleans which would be our last leg of our trip ! The journey would take about 3 and a half hours and take us across the state lines again from Mississippi to Louisiana ! The trip was going to plan right up to when we entered New Orleans, the sky turned a very angry shade of grey ! The heavens opened up and the mother of all storms raged for about 20 minutes ! We got through it and arrived at our new digs, we quickly headed out for a bite to eat and a few beers, The food of the south is called gumbo so that's what we had . . . Very nice ! We had ... read more