After suffering the humid and sticky heat of Texas, we were finally headed to Louisiana... and even more humid and sticky heat! It was like entering a new country, though, with a total change in vegetation and culture. This picture shows Spanish moss on a tree. I really love the swampy look of these wispy mosses! Anyway, we stopped in Lafayette for dinner on our way to New Orleans, and ended up eating gator sausages and cajun chicken at Bon Temps Grill (prawns were not in season unfortunately). They say they have "swamp edge" cuisine, still not sure what that means, but the food was great!
New Orleans is huge, guys. My idea of it before getting there was kind of a village feeling, with old stilt houses near the water and all. Turns out there is a bit of that, but the downtown area is modern as can be, and it made me think of Montreal a lot. But although downtowns are fun, we wanted to experience the history, so we headed right over to the French Quarter, or Vieux Carre, the oldest neighborhood of New Orleans. And NOLA celebrated its 300th birthday in 2018, so it's pretty old by American standards! Another disclaimer: there are hardly any francophones left in Louisiana due to linguistic oppression, so we didn't get to hear Louisiana French. 😟
As a first activity, we ate beignets at the Café du Monde (amazing!) and got our tickets to a historical cruise on the Creole Queen paddlewheeler. We sailed on the Mississippi river along the French Quarter, got to see (and smell, yum!) the Domino Sugar Chalmette Refinery, and wandered around on the Chalmette Battlefield at the Jean Lafitte National Park. It's a very cool crash course in the history of Louisiana as a whole, in fact, so we highly recommend doing this activity, especially if you're short on time.
Another must-do activity is visiting Mardi Gras World, a working studio where they make Mardi Gras floats, bigger-than-life statues for ads, and more! We even got bead necklaces and cake as a welcome gift. 😋 We also learned that this is the company that made the beautiful fiberglass Egyptian statues at the Luxor in Las Vegas, where we were staying! This is just a plain awesome place where you'll see the artists working on the upcoming parade and other orders. As a bonus, after the tour, you can stay as long as you want to really see everything in detail.
Walking around the French Quarter is really awesome. Parking is expensive in the area, though, so be prepared for a lot of walking. Since it was so hot when we were there, we stopped at nearly every other store to get our fix of air conditioning. The stores are very cool, though, and we tried on our fair share of carnival masks! If you want to bring home something typically Louisiana, make sure to grab cajun spices or canned gator meat. If you're into jazz music, you can check out the historic Bourbon Street, but since it's very touristy, you should check other, more indie bars for an authentic experience. As for food, you'll be spoiled for choice! We ate at Pat O'Brien's, which has (we believe) the nicest terrace in the city. And their signature Hurricane drink is awesome!
Now for a little history. The St. Louis Cathedral, built in 1727 in the middle of the French Quarter, is the oldest continually active Roman Catholic church in the United States. In front of it is Jackson Square, and yes that's a statue of Andrew Jackson, and it has caused quite a bit of controversy... Whatever your opinion on the matter, there's no denying the beauty of the place. It was also quite strange to be so close to our French roots so far from home.
Of course, you can't say you've seen New Orleans until you've seen the voodoo stuff! I didn't think we'd buy anything, but we did. Protective sculptures of a flying cat and a flying frog? Count me in! 💸 You'll have a great time browsing for sure, whatever store you find yourself in. Grab some mojo, gris-gris, spells, offering bags for blessings, or a famous voodoo doll! Some of the most interesting were La Belle Nouvelle Orleans, Voodoo Authentica, and Reverend Zombie's House of Voodoo (that's where we got our sculptures), sister shop of Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo. In the latter, you can pay to have access to the (tiny) museum about Marie Laveau and voodoo practices in the area. Don't touch anything, as some of the altars and artifacts are still used by people for religious practices, as you can see below. The desiccated cat on the third picture is a Black Cat Ju Ju, blessed to keep evil spirits away. Voodoo is a unique blend of beliefs, so go with an open mind!
If you want to go even more morbid than dried up cats and alligator heads, you can check out the Museum of Death. This is not a scary place, just very graphic and explicit. They have regular "falling down ovations", meaning people faint. No pictures allowed, of course, so pocket that phone and enjoy the hundreds of artifacts and photographs from crime scenes (like the Manson murders), accidents and crashes, mortician tools, etc. 💀
If you want something haunted, you should check out the various tours given by New Orleans Haunted History Tours. 👻 Great company, highly recommended! We took the 2-hour nighttime bus tour and have no regrets. We got to visit the most famous graveyards, a haunted lake and park, and the Hurricane Katrina Memorial, plus we stopped for a quick beer before heading back to the French Quarter. Did you know that in New Orleans, if you have an apartment complex facing a graveyard one way and the river the other way, there's a longer wait list for apartments on the graveyard side? 😮 Plus they can't bury the dead underground because of the swampy soil, so that's why they have mausoleums like the ones in the pictures below.
If you can't get enough of the weird stuff in NOLA, there's this random sculpture of an "apple pie" (nerd joke), and how people write "eaux" as an ending for any word that ends with an "oh" sound to look French and refined. This annoyed me to no end! As a francophone, when you read "Geaux Saints!", you cannot read it as "go", it just doesn't work that way! 😣 Anyway, that was my rant of the day. Moving on!
We will definitely go back to New Orleans at some point, most certainly during Mardi Gras. But it's time to hit the road once again. Stay tuned, folks! 💜
TL;DR: Foodies are sure to love NOLA! Grab some cajun food (gator, chicken, or prawns if in season), and stop by Café du Monde for freshly made beignets. For history buffs, take a historical cruise on the Creole Queen paddlewheeler and check out the French Quarter, St. Louis Cathedral and Bourbon Street. For some voodoo vibes, stop by any shop or take a look at Marie Laveau's collection! The Museum of Death is a must, and if you want scares and graveyards, get your fix with New Orleans Haunted History Tours. 👻
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