retirement trip of a lifetime..............lots more New Orleans!

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There is SO much more to New Orleans than music (although that would be enough!)
So here is some reminiscing, in no particular order, about the best bits of our week in the Big Easy.
Quite understandably coming here is coloured by memories of seeing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although the UK didn’t highlight it as much as the rest of America, we still had our newspapers and TV news dominated by photos of people being rescued from rooftops, the crowds in the Superdome, houses with that big cross symbol painted to show what had been found inside – and the awareness that things weren’t being handled well, although we probably didn’t really understand the full implications.
We knew that you could take post Katrina tours but didn’t really like the idea of staring out of an air conditioned coach at what had been other people’s misfortune. But on the last day of our coach tour we had a guide, a retired lady, who did take us all over the areas worst affected by the flooding, not just the lower 9th ward but other more affluent areas which were flooded badly too, including where she had lived in the district called Lakeview. She had many personal stories to share and it wasn’t at all gratuitous. Many people lost everything in these areas too as insurance companies wouldn’t pay out. She showed us an empty plot and said that was where her great aunt’s house had been and she now lived in a nursing home having lost all her belongings.
She also explained in great detail what had happened to the levees and then took us to the 17th Street Canal Floodwall to show us a Louisiana State historic plaque, put up last year, which reads
‘On August 29, 2005, a federal floodwall atop a levee on the 17th Street Canal, the largest and most important drainage canal for the city, gave way here causing flooding that killed hundreds. This breach was one of 50 ruptures in the federal Flood Protection System that occurred that day. In 2008, the US District Court placed responsibility for this floodwall's collapse squarely on the US Army Corps of Engineers; however, the agency is protected from financial liability in the Flood Control Act of 1928.’
It wasn’t a hurricane that caused such devastation, it was human error.
But the city is slowly recovering although it’s been a long wait for residents of the Lower 9th Ward who weren’t allowed to return to their homes until a couple of years ago. Officially residents were only allowed in during daylight hours to look, salvage possessions, and leave which quite understandably caused a lot of extra distress.
In the Lower 9th ward we saw new houses being built, one of them being a prototype for a house that raises itself up and floats if it gets surrounded by floodwater! We saw Make It Right houses which have been funded by people like Brad Pitt, also the Musician’s Village which is fast becoming a vibrant new community (and featured a lot on ‘Treme’)
Now hundreds of houses have been rebuilt and dozens of new homes have been constructed. While there is a long way to go residents are returning home. Volunteers continue to come to the area en masse working for dozens of organizations.
We saw a really good exhibition about Katrina at the Presbytere, a building in Jackson Square next to the cathedral. It went extensively into the whole background to the hurricane and what had actually happened, using film and sound but it also had a lot of human interest stuff with many things on display, like a pair of jeans with a man’s name, address and social security number written in biro along one leg so he could be identified if he died as he went for help through the flooding (he survived!); a garage door with writing saying ‘1 dead dog inside, do not remove, owner wants to bury’, a mud caked teddy bear and the wall of a house where the occupant had kept a diary by writing on the wall throughout the flooding and the weeks after. Happily he is now doing OK.
Like most tourists we visited a New Orleans cemetery – it sounds morbid but they are really interesting! Burial plots are shallow in New Orleans because the water table is high. Dig a few feet down, and the grave becomes soggy, filling with water. The casket will literally float. You just can't keep a good person down! The early settlers tried by placing stones in and on top of coffins to weigh them down and keep them underground. Unfortunately, after a rainstorm, the rising water table would literally pop the airtight coffins out of the ground. To this day, unpredictable flooding still lifts an occasional coffin out of the ground in those areas generally considered safe from flooding and above the water table. Eventually, New Orleans' graves were kept above ground following the Spanish custom of using vaults. The walls of these cemeteries are made up of economical vaults that are stacked on top of one another. The rich and wealthier families could afford the larger ornate tombs with crypts. Many family tombs look like miniature houses complete with iron fences.
The rows of tombs resemble streets and New Orleans burial plots quickly became known as "Cites of the Dead." Here is a question for you -- how can you bury more than one family member in each vault? How can a tomb hold all of those coffins? According to a local ordinance, as long as the previously deceased family member has been dead for at least two years, the remains of that person is moved to a specially made burial bag and put to the side or back of the vault. That coffin is then destroyed and the vault is now ready for the newly deceased family member. What happens if a family member dies within that two year time restriction? Generally, local cemeteries are equipped with temporary holding vaults and the newly deceased family member is moved into their final resting place when the time restriction is met.
Our guide showed us the 'family' vault for the nuns at her convent school and went down the list of names telling us the nice ones and the mean ones!!!
I’ve already mentioned how much I’ve enjoyed the TV show ‘Treme’. Apparently I’m not the only one as you can now go on a walking tour of the Treme area. It’s not the best place to walk around on your own – the owner of our B&B advised us not to. But we decided an organised walking tour with a guide would be fine. And it was one of the best things we did.
We started in Armstrong Park (named after Louis) and in the corner is Congo Square, an open space where slaves and free blacks gathered throughout the 19th century for meetings, open markets, and the African dance and drumming celebrations that played a substantial role in the development of jazz. There’s also a big concert hall here named after Mahalia Jackson. Ummm, is she related to Michael? Shamed to admit I hadn’t heard of her but she is one of the greatest US gospel singers and sang at Martin Luther King’s funeral - and Aretha Franklin sang at hers. She has a real rags to riches life story so must investigate her and her music when we get home.
Although it is no longer there it’s also possible to walk by the spot which was the infamous district called Storyville – the red light district in days gone by. A politician called Mr Story was appalled about the rise of prostitution in New Orleans and decided it would be sensible to localise it within one area of the city. This plan was put into effect and an area chosen, but to his horror the district was named after him, Storyville! It’s also said that gentlemen who were caught inside a brothel would say that they were innocently walking past when a girl ran out, grabbed their hat and ran back into the brothel with it. They were just getting their hat back!
Whilst we were in Nashville and Memphis we heard lots of claims for both cities being key in the birth of rock and roll and I thought that New Orleans’ was the birthplace of jazz. So we were really intrigued when our walking tour took us into a busy, working Laundromat. There was a plaque outside saying that for about 10 years in the late 40’s/early 50’s the building was J&M recording studio owned by Cosimo Matassa and used by people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis. A sound which was a hybrid of jazz and rock and roll developed and became known as the sound of New Orleans. There were many signed photos and some gold discs on the walls above the washing machines and driers! We got in people’s way as they were trying to do their washing and got some dirty looks which I could totally appreciate. I wouldn’t like a group of tourists taking photos as I was putting my dirty undies into a washing machine - so it was interesting but we were glad to move on.
On our walk we went past a few places that seemed worth a longer look so when the walking tour was officially over we walked back into Treme and wandered around. It was difficult to believe it was a dangerous place as it was very quiet and peaceful with streets full of homes, some well kept and some a bit shabbier, but we didn’t feel like it wasn't safe and the few people we saw were really friendly. Maybe it’s a different ballgame at night like any inner city area really.
One of the places we returned to was the Backstreet Cultural Museum mainly because it has a display about the Mardi Gras Indians who have been featured in a storyline on Treme. The Indians are African American men who make really beautiful and elaborate costumes by hand. Each costume boasts thousands of beads, shells, rhinestones, sequins and feathers and takes a year to make. costing upwards of $10,000 each and a new suit is made every year. There is a strict hierarchy of tribes and members within each tribe and it’s quite something to see the costumes on dummies in a museum so to see them in real life must be amazing. Mardi Gras Indians have been parading in New Orleans at least since the mid-19th century, possibly before. The tradition was said to have originated from an affinity between Africans and Indians as minorities within the dominant culture. There is also the story that the tradition began as an African American tribute to American Indians who helped runaway slaves.
The owner of the museum, Sylvester. showed us round and told us lots of stuff – only trouble was we couldn’t really understand his accent so did a lot of wisely nodding our heads and oohing and aahing. He’s quite an elderly man and it was very hot inside the museum and to our dismay he had a bit of a funny turn and had to go outside and get some fresh air. At the time he was showing us his other display room all about jazz funerals and how in his culture people don’t have a date of birth and date of death, it’s called sunrise and sunset. We had a horrid feeling he might have his own sunset right in front of us – but thankfully he seemed OK as we were leaving! He’s created quite an amazing collection of memorabilia at the museum; we're so glad we took the trouble to go back.
Walking around a place is always the best way to see its heart, so we’d come prepared with a couple of DIY walks and had time to do one around the French Quarter. The area is made up of just over 80 city blocks, and it's a living monument to history. Here, the colonial empires of France, Spain, and, to a lesser extent, Britain intersected with the emerging American nation.
We looked at a great number of buildings which after a while blurred into one as we didn’t really know the names of the people who had once lived there, and also the meaning of different types of ironwork on balconies didn’t really float our boat but we did discover some bits of trivia which I’m always up for!
For example, at 437 Royal St., Masonic lodge meetings were held regularly in a drugstore there in the early 1800s, but that's not what made the place famous. Proprietor and druggist Antoine A. Peychaud served after-meeting drinks of bitters and cognac to lodge members in small egg cups, whose French name (coquetier) was Americanized to "cocktail." Now that IS interesting and explains why every bar in New Orleans, however small, has a long cocktail list!
New Orleans is full of alternative types of spirituality - Jackson Square has many Tarot card readers and every gift shop has a section devoted to voodoo. There are some hardcore voodoo shops too and a huge tourist industry around visiting haunted buildings. It’s not our cup of tea but it’s not hard to see why it works so well as the whole city is very atmospheric with it being so swampy and with Spanish moss hanging off all the trees. If you like a good ghost story this is the place for you.
When we were trying to find somewhere to stay after our coach tour ended I read lots of ghostly claims on hotel and B&B websites and wondered why on earth anyone would deliberately choose to stay anywhere claiming to have something spooky going on and knowing John he’d spend his time hiding behind doors and jumping out to scare me!
But all my reading meant that as we wandered around the French Quarter I did recognise the names of several hotels and was able to remember some of their history (regardless of alleged hauntings!) Whilst we had lunch in a little backstreet cafe I realised that the hotel over the road was in fact the Villa Convento which claims to be the original House of the Rising Sun (you know, ‘there is a house in New Orleans......’)
Most of our 6 days in NOLA were spent just wandering around drinking it all in. We did go on a tour out to the River Road to see two plantation homes but I’ll spare you too much info and just post a few photos. We saw ‘LAURA’ which we liked best; it’s a a creole plantation with a great story behind it and an excellent tour. We also visited OAK ALLEY which has probably the most photogenic driveway in the USA. It was very beautiful and the guides all dressed up in Gone With the Wind style outfits which was a bit cheesy but fun. I had a heartstopping moment here too when I leant against the wall in the drawing room and felt something behind me move and then fall, accompanied by a very loud crashing noise. The guide and all the visitors turned and looked at me in horror – but it was only some brass thing that held back the curtains so it hadn’t broken. Pheww!!
Anyway, that’s about it re. New Orleans. Next stop Memphis again to spend an extra day (which turned out to be one of the best of the trip) and pick up a car to head into the Smoky Mountains.

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