New Orleans

Rolande and I have just returned from a visit to New Orleans. We were hosted by Rolande’s niece, Diane and her husband, Dean, who also did a great job as our guides to a city we haven’t visited before. We arrived at the very beginning of the Mardi Gras celebrations, about two weeks before the grand finale, Fat Tuesday on February 21.

We didn’t get deeply immersed in the celebrations. We did get a sense of the Mardi Gras and its many events. There are indeed many.

Today’s post will show and tell you a little about our time spent in the city. I will publish a second post later, devoted to the time we spent in and around our hosts’ home, in Mandeville, located across Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city.

This first picture was taken from a vantage point in the Center City area, overlooking Jackson Square, with St. Louis Cathedral in the background.

We entered the square from St. Ann Street on our way to catching a mule drawn carriage for a guided tour of the area.

In the course of our tour we passed a number of interesting residences, along the web of streets in the downtown core of New Orleans. Many were colourfully decorated in anticipation of the holiday.

We disembarked on Bourbon Street where celebrations were in full swing in the early afternoon. These people are members of one of many societies (known as krewes), some dating back to the late 19th century. They are tossing trinkets (most notably colourful beads) to the people on the jam-packed street below, . The krewes are civic-minded groups who participate in the many parades, some marching (include marching bands) and others sponsoring elaborate floats. This year, the krewes will put on 58 different parades in the course of Mardi Gras.

Here’s a well decorated commercial establishment on Bourbon Street. Not unlike the Christmas tradition, people decorate their homes, in this case with the traditional green, yellow and purple flags and decorations.

Diane took me for an afternoon tour of the Uptown/Carollton area of the city. It’s a fashionable, residential area with beautifully treed streets, such as pictured in the photograph below. There is a tram line running through the area, along St. Charles Avenue, powered electrically via overhead cables.

I found St. Charles Avenue to be attractive, a broad thoroughfare with the tram tracks down the middle and tree-lined roadways on each side. It’s a combination of residential and commercial buildings and several quality restaurants for the hungry. These particular trees, forming an archway over the sidewalk are Live Oaks, a popular tree throughout the South.

This is a scene from the Cyprus Grove cemetery in New Orleans.  The city is at or below sea level, resulting in a high water table in the soil. If a body or coffin is placed in an in-ground tomb in New Orleans, there is risk of it being water-logged or even displaced from the ground. For this reason, the people of New Orleans have generally used above-ground tombs. The Cypress Grove Cemetery was completed in 1904. 

I can only include so many pictures in a blog post. I found it a challenge to choose from the large number of photos I took for today’s post. I hope you’ll enjoy the selections I’ve made.

I’ll return soon with Chapter 2 of our visit to Louisiana.