This is my final blog post for the trip, I can’t believe how quickly it has gone!
Last night we went back to Napoleon House for dinner where we shared jambalaya and a muffaletta (sandwich). We shared an ice cream, and then we headed to Fritzel's European Jazz Pub where we enjoyed some live jazz music on Bourbon Street.
This morning we met our walking tour to the St Louis Cemetery No. 1. Overall, it was OK. Our guide was very passionate and quirky, but she talked really fast and kept going off on tangents mid sentence. It was hard to follow, and gave me more questions than answers. However, due to vandalism in the cemetery over the last few years, tourists can only enter with a tour guide since 2015. So it was worthwhile joining the tour just to go in.
First, we stopped at a small church called Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was our guide’s local church, and centuries ago was the mortuary chapel for those that died of yellow fever - which apparently killed more people here than anywhere else in the US. She said she loves her congregation for two reasons: the church lets homeless people come in for shelter after mass, and they have jazz mass on Sundays.
The first cemetery in New Orleans was consecrated in 1724, and was just down the street from this church. It filled quickly due to disease epidemics, and people were buried in the ground in this one. However, if you dig 45cm in New Orleans, you hit water. So when burying these people, holes were made in their caskets and bricks were placed inside the caskets to weigh them down and stop them floating away. Apparently the cypress that the caskets were made out of remains preserved, so when old burial grounds are found today, they are still in tact.
These original cemeteries were built over because people at the time believed the smells from the cemeteries were causing other people to catch yellow fever. So the St Louis Cemetery No. 1 was consecrated in 1789 and is the oldest remaining cemetery in New Orleans. After people had been buried here, the Spanish reduced its size and began to build houses on some of its land. Subsequently, this meant the families of those already buried had to move them.
When we arrived at the cemetery, we paid $2 per person. Our guide told us that the Spanish bury their dead in tombs above the ground, which is why the tombs in this cemetery are above ground. This was interesting because I had assumed they were above ground to avoid flooding. Apparently in the Catholic religion here, the body is first placed inside the tomb. After one year and one day, it is pushed to the back and falls to a pit at the bottom. Sounds pretty creepy to me!
The first grave we stopped and looked at was that of Marie Laveau, a famous voodoo practitioner and herbalist from the 1800s. Apparently she also had a very big heart as she took in orphans and helped to raise them, and allowed for 80 unrelated people to her to be buried in her tomb that couldn't afford their own. When she died, hundreds if not thousands of people attended her funeral. We then saw the grave of Etienne de Bore, the first mayor of New Orleans.
The tour took a strange turn at this point, as we realised our guide was telling us that Nicholas Cage's tomb was in front of us. Rob and I looked at each other and said "isn't he still alive?", and then it all made sense when the guide said "so when he dies, this is where his name will go". It turns out that Nicholas Cage loves New Orleans, and owns a house and a church here. Contrary to the outrage of many locals, he was able to buy a plot in this graveyard for $275,000 US which meant some existing graves had to be moved to make room for his pyramid tomb. I joked to Rob that it reminded me of something to do with Cage's movies 'National Treasure', but apparently it's because he wants to be buried near Marie Laveau.
We saw a tomb that featured in the movie 'Easy Rider', some Battle of New Orleans graves and Homer Plessy's grave. Then we saw the Musicians Tomb, which belong to the Barbarin family who donated it for poor musicians that can't afford their own tomb to be buried in. This then led into a discussion about jazz funerals. I looked them up on YouTube - wow! The funeral starts off with slow, durge music. After the body is buried the tempo picks up and jazz music is played to celebrate the life of the person who died.
I noticed on many tombs three Xs written in a row, like "X X X". Apparently New Orleanians are very superstitious, and our guide said this had to do with voodoo superstitions. She then went on to tell us some funny stories of how superstitious her parents were when she was growing up.
After the tour, Rob and I walked to Armstrong Park. This park is named after the famous jazz musician from here Louis Armstrong. We enjoyed the great sculptures of musicians in the park, as well as the sculpture of Louis himself. It was a sunny and beautiful day today, so a nice day for a walk through. In the park was Congo Square. This was a square in which enslaved people would congregate on a Sunday and drum, dance, sing and trade, apparently with crowds of up to 500-600 people. These expressions of music and dance eventually developed into Mardi Gras and many genres of music that came out of New Orleans including jazz, rhythm and blues.
We then headed down to Jackson Square, which had a completely different vibe today. We think maybe a lot of people make a long weekend out of New Orleans, because there were lots more people, musicians and tarot card readers around today. The queue for beignets was huuuuuuge. We sat by the Mississippi River for a while before sharing a shrimp Po Boy for lunch.
Next we caught the St Charles Avenue streetcar to the Garden District. I had downloaded an audioguide before we left home for this, and it was really good. It explained that the streetcars here began in 1835 to join the various 'cities' cropping up that make up today's New Orleans. This is why the street names change either side of Canal Street, because there are the street names in the CBD and in the French Quarter. When the Americans came here after the Louisiana Purchase, they began to develop what is now the CBD area and many built mansions to the east of that in the Garden District. The streetcar allowed them to commute to work in the CBD or French Quarter. The cars operating today are from the 1920s, and the interior was beautiful.
For two hours, we caught the streetcar the entire length of its course, and then back again. We couldn't hang out the side like in San Fran, but we could open the window and enjoy the sun and fresh air. We saw the Mardi Gras stages being set up in preparation for the coming weeks, as well as many beads hanging from oak trees from Mardi Gras parades of the past. We learned that other than the French Quarter, the rest of the city used to be plantations were eventually sold to developers. Then we went past the WWII Museum which is meant to be fantastic. It started off as the D Day Museum because apparently the D Day boats were made by a company here, but has been added to so comprehensively that it's now the best collection of WWII resources in the USA.
We got to the Garden District and saw many beautiful mansions surrounded by oak trees. Some of them had awful unit complexes next to them, so it reminded me of Toorak or Hawthorn etc. back home. We then passed Tulane and Loyola Universities.
Once back in the French Quarter, we sat together by the Mississippi as the sun dropped below the buildings. I leave to head home tomorrow, but Rob continues to Washington DC and New York City. It's been so great spending such a long time together on this trip. Though we have had a little bit of bad luck getting so sick in the first couple of weeks, we have had a wonderful time and really enjoyed each other's company. At home, we rarely get to spend quality time together due to us both being so busy with work and our work hours differing to each other so much. I've really enjoyed and appreciated the time I have been able to spend with Rob over here, and I think we became even closer every day of the trip.
We didn't head back to the hotel for a rest today, but instead, Rob queued up outside Preservation Hall while I quickly dropped all the things we didn't need back at our hotel. We again went to the 6pm show, but today we were at the front of the walkup queue (which was huge by the time the show started!). Rob got a seat on a bench, and I went and sat on some cushions on the floor with some teenagers. The show was even more wonderful than Wednesday. The trombone player and clarinet player were the same, but the drummer, pianist, trumpet player and bass player were different. We enjoyed this makeup more as they seemed to have more fun together and really got into it. The crowd got more involved and they had us singing some lyrics, laughing at jokes etc. I'm glad we got to go twice!!
Then we went for one last dinner at the Napoleon House. If you come here, eat at Napoleon House. Their food is delicious, the restaurant has a great atmosphere, and they're 1/3 the price of all the tacky places off of Bourbon Street. We went three times and loved the food and service each time we went. Then, of course we stopped for one last helping of beignets on the way home. From my calculations, here is my tally for New Orleans: 3x servings of beignets, 2x jambalaya, 1x gumbo, 2x po boys, 1x muffaletta. We did well!
Tomorrow morning, we are heading to the airport together. Rob's flight leaves at 11.10am and mine is at 1.40pm. I fly home via Los Angeles, arriving home Monday before heading back to work on Tuesday. I have had such a wonderful time on this trip, and have seen, learned and experienced so much. Thank you so much for reading along, I hope you have enjoyed it too! See you in Japan in March!!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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