2024 Visit New Orleans
(1/25/2024 - 1/28/2024)
2024 Visit New Orleans(1/25/2024 - 1/28/2024)
|
|
On Thursday, January 25, 2024, Katherine and Brian travelled to New Orleans and met up with Fachon and Thomas. Click on any photo for a much larger highest resolution original I have.
First, a short 3 minute movie if you want to see the "vibe" in video format. Click here for the highest quality version (but it's 32 GBytes).
Ok, back to roughly chronological order of the 3 days... Katherine and I flew the pretty quick 70 minute flight direct non-stop Austin to New Orleans.
We parked our car in the "Red Parking" zone at Austin airport.
In the Austin Airport, there was this DHS (Department of Homeland Security) doggie that just wanted to be petted. Nobody would pet him and he didn't know why (there was a sign on his neck saying "Don't Pet"). It was so sad, mentally torturing a puppy.
Arriving into New Orleans, photo of a random sign in the airport.
We stayed at the Hyatt Centric in the French Quarter. Katherine and I got a balcony suite overlooking Bourbon Street. The "suite" was basically just two rooms with an internal adjoining set of doors (on the far right in the picture below).
A picture leaning out from our balcony in the Hyatt Centric looking down Bourbon Street. The balcony is behind the drapes in the photo above. Now while this sounds fun, getting a room next to Bourbon Street was a tactical error. It was extremely loud, all day and all night. EXTREMELY LOUD. And it isn't like you really want to hang out on the balcony in your room. We barely slept for 3 days. There was a homeless guy beating on a 5 gallon plastic bucket with drum sticks most of the time, and he wasn't a good drummer.
The room came stocked with this little liquor cabinet and a few snacks, which was nice.
A random picture of Bourbon Street as we walked to dinner.
The first night (Thursday, January 25th) we ate at "Beach Bum Berry's Latitude 29" which is a Tiki bar theme.
Katherine and Fachon shared a big drink, Fachon is mugging for the camera, LOL.
Katherine and Thomas.
The next morning, Fachon, Thomas, and I went to "Ruby Slipper" for breakfast. Katherine slept in. The food was great!
Breakfast. Fachon got shrimp and grits.
My pancakes.
That night we ate at "Dooky Chase". It was really, really good.
Shrimp appetizer to share at Dooky Chase.
A random photo of our food at Dookie Chase.
After dinner we took an Uber to "The Saint" bar. I have no idea how this location was chosen. The bartender was this big tattooed, tough looking guy but when we started talking about the Vampire movie showing on the bar's TVs he kind of geeked out with us talking about actors and behind the scenes explanations and started listing movies the same actors had all been in together. He was super nice.
The bar area at "The Saint".
Random wall of decorations.
Display case at "The Saint".
The picture below was taken at 2am, I'm in a bathrobe marveling at how really loud it is and pretty busy for 2am.
The next morning Fachon, Thomas, and I went out for breakfast. It was Saturday morning so all the most popular places were packed with long waits, so we randomly found the "Palace Cafe" (picture below). The food was really quite excellent and there wasn't any wait.
I had steak, eggs, and french fries, and it was really amazingly good.
On the way back to our hotel, we picked up a "to go" order for Katherine from "Daisy Dukes".
In the afternoon we all went on a walking tour of one cemetary: "St Louis Cemetery No 1 Official Tour". It was fun and interesting, more from just learning bits of history about New Orleans.
Waiting for the tour to start.
Our tour guide explaining how the tombs "work". Each person is placed into the tomb which is sealed for 1 year and 1 day at least. When the next person in the family passes away, they dump whatever is left of the body on the floor and push it to the back of the tomb and burn the coffin to dispose of it. Repeat forever. The land for a family's tomb is owned (and inherited) but some of the tombs have become unknown who owns them and fall into disrepair.
Turning around, if two family members pass away within a year of each other, the family rents temporary space for the second person in this rental area, then eventually they take up space in the family tomb.
Marie Laveau is a really famous historical figure in New Orleans. She was a Voodoo Practitioner. Because her husband Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion was white and Laveau was black, they could not legally marry so he is listed as "consort" below.
Nicolas Cage built a tomb here for himself and his family. Seen pictured below.
A stroll through a New Orleans cemetery. You can see some well maintained tombs and some that have fallen into disrepair.
The tomb below is a very new monument to contributions of African Americans to the history of New Orleans. The four sides represent: religion, music, business, and social.
There are various informational plaques around cemetery.
I took the picture below to show the three "X" symbols people have written on tombs. Somebody started a rumor that if you want something from dead Marie Laveau, you mark three Xs on her tomb, spin around 3 times, break a brick off ANOTHER tomb, and some other stuff.
A random tomb in the cemetery. I thought the sign at the bottom "Closed Forever" was interesting.
If your family is not wealthy enough to have their own tomb, you can belong to different "societies" which have larger group tombs. Below is one of the largest.
Later that day wandering around the motorcycle pictured below had a really loud speaker system and was thumping out music.
We randomly stopped in an utterly random bar called "Copper Monkey Grill".
On the way to watch a parade, I noticed this rather small police car that only had two doors. Like where do you put the criminals in handcuffs?
We wanted to see a parade, so we stopped about this location, got a drink, and hung out on the street waiting. By the "Crescent City Brewhouse".
The parade was by "Krewe Du Vieux". The words "Vieux Carre" means "French Quarter", and their whole name is "Krewe Du Vieux Carre". Because this "Krewe" (set of parade people) does not use any tractor equipment to pull large floats, it only uses mules and people power, it is the only Krewe allowed to parade through the small tight streets in the French Quarter. The larger parades have to stay on larger streets. It was entertaining if a bit random.
We had to duck away from the parade right before it entirely passed us to enter into our dinner spot "Cane and Table" at our reservation time. Amusingly this meant crossing through the parade to the other side of the street, which was exciting. So I claim I have marched in a New Orleans parade now, LOL. The food was EXCELLENT. I order Brussels sprouts at many restaurants, always searching for the best preparation (and almost always falling short). The ones here are a contender for the very best I've ever had, anywhere. They were PERFECTLY baked/fried, and the sauce was delicious.
I took the picture below of our group on one of the cleanest streets in New Orleans.
The symbol I associate with the Boy Scouts of America was all over New Orleans, and is called the "fleur-de-lis". In regards to New Orleans, it just kind of means "French-ish" or "Creole Identity" or just New Orleans in general.
Here we are waiting at the New Orleans Airport MSY. If you visit that Wikipedia page, notice the symbol for the airport is a "fleur-de-lis".
Just when we got home, Ava was so extremely happy to see me and just wanted to be petted. She missed me.
That's it! That's all the pictures and movies. All done!