Suzy and I departed for New Orleans on Friday, March 17, St
Patrick’s Day, on a direct flight from Reagan National Airport to Louis
Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans.
Our friend Steve Bamberger was kind enough to take us to catch a morning
flight—Thanks Steve! Road Scholar Tours
are what used to be known as “Elder Hostel” and combine tourism with a learning
experience which includes daily lectures and /or demonstrations. This was our
first experience with this program, but had received lots of advance
information, so we knew what to expect.
Our flight put us into New Orleans in mid-morning and we caught a cab to
our Hotel downtown and so were not able to check into our room right away, but
were able to check our bags with the bell captain and, armed with our map of
the area, we headed out to explore “The Big Easy” on our own. Our first adventure was catching an electric
trolley close by the hotel and taking a ride on it down towards the river,
getting off near the Harrah’s Club which put us within easy walking distance to
the French Quarter. We navigated our way
to Café Du Monde where we joined a rather long line of people waiting to get in
to have coffee and beignets which are like donuts without the holes and
sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar.
They come warm out of the fryer and are heavily covered in powdered
sugar. The coffee has a bit of chicory ground in it, but with cream and sugar,
I could not tell the difference between their coffee and what we drink at
home. The line moved quickly and we were
soon seated at a small round café table covered in powder sugar from previous
patrons. We got our order quickly and
enjoyed our treat, then headed across the street to Jackson Square which takes
up more than a city block and fronts the St. Louis Cathedral. The fences are covered with artwork for sale
and across from the cathedral there are all kinds of street activity going on
from palm readers to jazz bands, people in costume and hordes of tourists
taking pictures (Follow this link to hear a Dixieland Band Perform at Jackson Square). We pressed on and made
our way to Bourbon Street, which was already hopping as it was St. Patrick’s
Day with even more hordes of tourists dressed in various articles of green,
many of whom who had already been liberally partaking of adult beverages! It was quite a sight with all sorts and
conditions of weirdness going on, as well as music blasting from clubs and
café’s and folks perched on balconies looking over wrought iron rails and
partying hard. We had a mission to find
Preservation Hall, so we could see about getting tickets for The Preservation
Hall Jazz Band concert the next night, which according to pour preliminary
schedule was a free evening on our own.
It turned out the place was just a little hole in the wall, but we got
in to see the ticket sales rep and were able to get tickets for the 6 p.m. show
the next day. We paid a premium to bypass the line and be guaranteed a place to
sit, declared victory and went in search of a place to have lunch. We
eventually made our way back to the street car line and took it back to where
we had to get off and walk the rest of the way back to our hotel.
By this time our room was ready and we could get our bags in
and unpack a bit, freshen up and get ready for our initial meeting of our group
at 4 p.m. We gathered in a small party
room and met our tour director, Ms. Bee Byrnes, a lovely widow lady from Natchez,
Mississippi who has done touring for many years and was very personable. Once
we had gathered, she gave us our schedules and some passes for some of the
attractions in town, to include some jazz clubs and two museums. We each got to stand up and introduce
ourselves to the group, tell where we were from and just a bit of background on
ourselves. We were then set free to get
ready for our buffet dinner at the hotel a bit later. After dinner, we had a program of music
provided by a jazz trio of 3 musicians who had been working over 20 years each
as professional musicians in New Orleans, all from other places around the
country but came for the music an stayed on.
The spokesman for the group was a very talented clarinetist, the banjo
player knew verses to songs that one would know the chorus, but had never heard
the verses to. A string bass player
rounded out the trio. They played a
number of rousing Dixieland numbers and talked about how Victor recordings were
made of the original Dixieland Jazz Band in New Orleans in 1917. It turns out my grandfather Speare had
purchased a number of those recordings as a young man and when my family moved
into his house in 1958 to live in Laurel, Montana, those records were still
around. We used to listen to them
regularly and so the tunes were familiar.
They played requests as well, answered questions and wrapped things up
just before 8 p.m. as the clarinet player was playing in a club from 9 until
midnight that night. I bought one of his CD’s and have enjoyed it since coming
back home. By that time our long day was
catching up to us and rather than try and make our way around after dark, we
went down to the hotel bar and chatted with some of our group mates, then went
to bed early.
Saturday morning we were up and at ‘em for a buffet
breakfast in the hotel, and headed to the bus to tour the city with our group
and a dedicated bus driver we had with us for all but the last day of our Road
Scholar experience. Our local guide was a woman named Anne who reminded me of
Bea Arthur from “Maude”-- humorous, earthy and not at all politically
correct! We went down some of the main
streets of the city a she pointed out various landmarks. Our first tour stop was St. Louis Cemetery.
Cemeteries are unique in New Orleans as they are all above ground tombs because
of the low water table and flooding which makes it impossible to do below
ground burials. The tombs usually belong
to families, but in some cases in the past, groups of immigrants would form
benevolent societies that would go together and provide a resting place for
their own ethnic group. In some cases, religious orders would have one tomb for
the entire order of nuns. These were much larger edifices than family tombs. In the case of a family, when a family member
dies, the front cover of the tomb is opened and simple wood coffin is placed on
a shelf about ¾ of the way to the top in the tomb and the cover is resealed. The
remains and coffin decompose rapidly in the heat and humidity of that area and
within about 18 months all that are left are bones. When the next person dies, the bones are
pushed to the back of the tomb with a long handled rake and fall down a shaft
to the floor and the shelf space is open for the next person. That is one of
the sources of the saying “so and so got the shaft”! If things are backed up in the family crypt
there are temporary vaults that are used on a rental basis at the back of each
of these cemeteries. As an exception, since Jewish ritual prescribes being
buried in the earth, Jewish graves sites are set up like raised bed gardens
with a family plot built with a border of concrete and filled with earth, which
is covered in thin stone or concrete with a marker stone on top of that.
Families keep up their tombs and since these are pretty much all Roman Catholic
cemeteries, there is usually a big sprucing up operation that happens on All
Saints’ Day. These cemeteries are called
“Cities of the Dead” and tourists can only go in with a local licensed guide. Our
next stop was a large city park with a sculpture garden and many walking paths
and water features. We had about an hour
to explore on our own. It also had a
coffee and beignet café on site, which we took advantage of, but I found the
beignets to be not as good as Café Du Monde’s. We next went to see the 9th
Ward, a lower income, predominately African-American area which was impacted
severely by Hurricane Katrina. We viewed the replacement homes Brad Pitt and
his foundation have arranged to be built for poor families who lost their homes
in the flooding. They are odd looking
structures as architects were given free rein to let their imaginations roam,
but all are built up on structures to avoid flooding and have solar panels and
other energy efficient features. This particular
area has only partially recovered the population lost as most people resettled
out the area, so the neighborhoods are rather sparse compared to other parts of
the city.
We were set up to do lunch at a local seafood restaurant and
got over there in time to have our group lunch, which was very good. I had the special, shrimp and grits as well
as their signature dessert which is ice cream in a light pastry shell. The
restaurant was on the St Charles streetcar line, which still runs the vintage
green streetcars from the 1930’s that look like “A Streetcar Named Desire”
streetcars, very nostalgic. As an aside, we learned that one of the early
wealthy benefactors and developers in the city named some of the streets after
emotions like “love”, “desire” and so forth, which is where that streetcar got
its name, from the street it went down, Desire Street. We also learned that the
wide boulevards between the traffic lanes are called “neutral ground”
locally. A lot of them cover drainage
canals that keep the water flowing to Lake Ponchatrain to keep the below sea
level parts of town dry. Speaking of the lake that was our next drive by, a
large body of water with one of the world’s longest floating bridges spanning
part of it. The lake front in that area has been completely rebuilt after
Katrina and looks fresh. It was a warm
sunny day with lots of sailboats out, but our guide said the lake is fairly
shallow and can get rough very quickly if the weather gets bad. From there we went to the Garden District and
did a walking tour of very fancy homes that by law must be preserved and not
redeveloped. These are homes for the
wealthy population and sit high enough here was no flooding during Katrina.
When these homes were built in the early 1800’s, they were platted four to a
city block, so are large with large grounds.
However, several cover a whole city block and are prohibitively
expensive to maintain, so some are vacant properties for sale-- if you have the
millions it takes to buy one! We did see
the author Anne Rice’s home and Archie Manning’s home, both very nice. We
wrapped up that phase of the tour, returned to the hotel and regrouped at 5
p.m. for a cooking class in the French quarter that started at 5 p.m. This was a small problem for Suzy and I as we
had purchased the Preservation Hall concert tickets based on the preliminary
schedule we had been given in advance of traveling, but the one we got at the
initial group meeting had activities for Sunday and Saturday switched, so our
Free afternoon and evening was actually Sunday instead of Saturday. Since we
were in the Quarter, we were able to stay for part of the class (the Gumbo
portion) and have a bowl of gumbo before we had to excuse ourselves and walk a
few blocks over to Preservation Hall.
The line was large, but we had the premium pass, and since we still had
a few minutes to kill, we went next door to a local institution on Bourbon Street;
Pat O’Brian’s Irish Pub to see the continuation of what must have been one heck
of a St Patrick’s Day party the day before.
We were there just a few minutes, and while there a bride and groom came
in from being married in full wedding regalia in the middle of Bourbon Street a
bit before. The place has an open
courtyard that was packed with revelers.
We made a quick pit stop and headed back to Preservation Hall, got right
in and found our reserved seats on two long wooden benches with no backs, but
beat the general admission folks who had to stand at the back or sit on very
grungy cushions on the floor in front of the band. I have been in bigger garages than this room.
The band played their 45 minute set and did traditional Dixieland Tunes like “Muskrat
Ramble” and “Basin Street Blues”. They were all African American and generally
older guys, with the exception of the piano player who was young and
white. They would play a tune through
and then let each player take a solo riff, all of whom did a great job and were
applauded roundly after each riff. The
sun had set when we got out of the concert, but the fun was just beginning as
the St Joseph’s day parade was in full swing on Bourbon Street with all the
Italian American Groups having their day just one day after St. Patrick’s Irish
extravaganza (follow this link to see a bit of the parade). It was loud, bright and
they were throwing beads, so we worked our way towards Canal Street, trying to
get to Deanies (pronounced “Deans”) restaurant just off Bourbon Street which
had been recommended by our Foot Doctor who comes from Baton Rouge but knows
New Orleans. We finally had to cut off
from Bourbon Street as the crowds were too much. When we got there, it was going to be almost
a 2 hour wait so we walked back to the hotel and had a very ordinary dinner
there and went to bed.
Sunday morning we had our normal buffet breakfast at the
hotel followed by a presentation by a retired steamboat captain, Clarke W.
(Doc) Hawley, on some of the history of the steamboats on various rivers, but
particularly the Mississippi. He had piloted or captained both the Mississippi
and Delta Queen steamboats in their heyday. He was in his 80’s and sharp as a tack,
with lots of slides of historical steamboats and life on the rivers of America
in the past. He was born and raised in
West Virginia and got his start as a teenager doing summer work on local
steamers playing the calliope (by ear) and popping popcorn, eventually working
his way up to being a pilot and captain.
In the 1800’s cotton bales weighing some 500 pounds each would be loaded
on the boats tied up at plantations along the river, eventually entirely
covering them up and shipped up or down river for export to ocean going ships
or domestic use in textile mills up North. In a major river port there might be
50 or 60 big boats tied up side by side unloading their bales of cotton. We learned that all the showboats we hear
about never really existed, they were all actually barges with superstructures
and performing areas built up on them and then were pushed or towed from town
to town by steam tugboats. One interesting photo he had was of a small steam
powered sawmill boat on the Yellowstone river stopped at a farm near Sydney
Montana and cutting lumber on the riverbank for a farmer. After some time for Q&A, we said goodbye
to him and got on the bus to go to tour Mardi Gras World.
Mardis Gras World is a huge complex of warehouses owned by a
company that designs and builds and stores over half of the floats used in
Mardis Gras. We started out with a film about the company and what they do, and
then were offered a slice of “King Cake” the special cinnamon flavored cake
that is iced in the purple, gold and green colors of Mardi Gras, then had a
guided tour through one of the main warehouses where a lot of the floats are
stored. They do a lot of reutilization,
especially of the floral pattern floats, but themes come and go and the large fiberglass
or paper mache’ figures are repaired and repurposed. As in the Rose Parade, the floats keep
getting bigger and bigger and they link them together to make even bigger ones,
all pulled by tractors. The official Mardi Gras parades no longer go down
Bourbon Street as it is too narrow (the much smaller scale St Joseph Day parade
we saw on Bourbon has smaller floats that can negotiate narrow streets), but go
down the main thoroughfares like Canal and St. Charles Street. Since Mardi Gras had just happened in
February, the trees along those routes were still festooned with thousands of
beads that had been thrown back in February.
We learned it was not just a one day affair on the Tuesday before Ash
Wednesday, but goes on for two weeks prior with some 50 plus “Krews”
participating and all trying to outdo the others. The people that ride the floats and do the
throwing have to wear masks and they are safety line strapped in so if they
have overindulged in adult beverages they can be safe from falling off the
floats. They have two or three cleverly
disguised port-a-potties on board for necessary relief. These organizations are
major social clubs in the city and some are very exclusive. All are non-profits and raise their own
funds, do some charitable work, but manly sink hundreds of thousands of dollars
into the floats, beads, trinkets and stuffed toys that are tossed to the crowds
and pay their expenses to do the parade itself. No public funds are spent on
Mardis Gras other than public safety.
From there we went by bus with the group over to a
restaurant in Metiare, a suburb of New Orleans and had some good seafood. We had to get moving quickly after that as
the streets were closing for the routing of the major “Mardi Gras Indian”
Parade that happens once a year on that date.
This is an African-American tradition that goes way back to the early
1900’s and involved local ‘tribes”, really neighborhoods, making very elaborate
costumes and parading around challenging other “tribes” as to which one was the
best. In days past, some of those
challenges took the form of violence including knife fights, but these days
it’s all about which group looks the best in their finery. From Metiare we were
taken back to the hotel and given the option to go back to the French Quarter
or stay at the hotel. We went back to
the French Quarter and had another round of Coffee and Beignets at Café Du
Monde, then went to the museums next to St Louis Cathedral. We both toured the Louisiana History Museum
and I stayed there for some more extensive study while Suzy went to a museum on
the other side of the cathedral that had the elaborate Mardi Gras
costumes. After the museums closed we wanted
to look at the cathedral interior, but it was closed getting ready for an organ
concert later that evening. We walked a few blocks down to the to the levee by
the Mississippi river(follow this link to hear a steamboat calliope at the levee), where we watched some street performers (follow this link to see some street performers), then went back
up to Bourbon Street and used one of our set of club coupons provided by our
tour director to stop and listen to some traditional Dixieland Jazz across from
Preservation Hall. They were the real deal, to include having a sousaphone
player instead of an upright string bass like we had heard the night before at
Preservation Hall. We wandered up
Bourbon Street towards canal Street heading to try once again to eat dinner at
Deanies. Along the way, a large wedding party of African-Americans had their
formal wedding parade down Bourbon Street with a Jazz marching band and
everyone doing the “second line” strut down the street in gowns and tuxes, another
unique experience for us. When we got to
Deanies, we found it to be almost as busy as the day before. We opted to wait
in a short line at Felix’s Oyster House, which was supposed to be good as well
and did have some very tasty char-broiled oysters for a starter and I had my
New Orleans fired oyster po-boy platter. After dinner we walked directly back
to the hotel and got packed up to leave the next day.
Monday morning our bags were taken to the bus, and we were
taken back to the French Quarter for a buffet brunch at the famous Court of the
Two Sisters restaurant on Royal Street. The iron entry gates are known as the
“Charm Gates” as supposedly they were blessed by Queen Isabella of Spain and
installed when Spain was in control of the Louisiana and New Orleans. The setting was a lovely courtyard garden
with live music. Inside were two huge buffets of hot and cold foods where you
served yourself. The tables were set
with linen and real silver, and we were served our coffee and other drinks with
a very attentive wait staff. Needless to say, we were well fed when we
finished. We had about one half hour before we had to be back to the pickup
point for our bus, so Suzy and I took a quick walk to the St. Louis cathedral
and went through it quickly. We made it to the bus on time and loaded up for
one more tour stop before going to the Steamboat. New Orleans has one of the most extensive
World War II museums in the country and we had several hours to visit the
complex. The first stop in that experience is viewing a very moving documentary
of the entire war era, narrated by Tom Hanks. It is a “4-D” experience with
seats that vibrate when tanks rumble by, fake snow falling in the Battle of the
Bulge scenes and scents of burning wood as Tokyo is in flames from aerial
bombing. We did not have enough time to
see nearly all of what is in the museum, it’s a “must see” for anyone who
visits New Orleans, but give yourself a whole day to see it right. From there it was time to head to the steamboat
at the cruise ship terminal and get processed onto the American Queen, find our
staterooms and unpack. Needless to say,
we enjoyed our New Orleans experience and were ready to continue the adventure
on the Mississippi.
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