We arrived at the Jude RV park east of downtown New Orleans on May 13 in time to go out for dinner that night. The hostess at the park was great in giving us recommendations and directions about things to see, restaurants and where to park to walk the French Quarter.
( I started this blog in May but overlooked finishing it until mid July, so memory has faded about some details. Unfortunately, the posting of this blog makes it out of the usual chronological order.)
We made it to Deanie’s seafood restaurant in the Bucktown area early enough to have prompt seating. Deanie’s has another restaurant in the French Quarter. Below, Jo enjoyed her entrée and had enough leftovers for me to have two lunches.
Below is my entrée – crab cakes. By the time we finished, there was a long waiting line for seating.
On May 14 we parked the Jeep at the edge of the French Quarter to spend most of the day in the area.
The French Quarter is just 13 blocks east – west and 6 blocks north - south. Parts of some of the east - west streets are devoted to commercial uses - bars, restaurants, voodo shops and tourist shops.The rest mainly have living quarters and hotels.
This appears to be a mansion converted to a hotel. Parking in the area is at a premium, both night and day.
Yes, we saw a few vagrants in the area.
An impromptu jam session blocked this street in the afternoon. During the day the streets generally are open to traffic, but the ones such as Bourbon Street at night are for pedestrians only .
After we walked many of the French Quarter streets, we exited to the downtown area on Canal Street on which one of the 5 streetcar lines run. An all day pass for all of the lines is just $3.00.
I would have loved to ride all of them, but we took just the St. Charles line for a round trip
Near the Garden District we visited Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, opened 1833, above ground due to the high water table. Many crypts and tombs are well maintained. The series of names on the monument above show that several folks are buried there. Below, these have not been maintained. Docents are available to guide visitors to the graves of prominent persons and to talk about the history of the cemetery.
GARDEN DISRICT
The Garden District has lots of mansions. But it also has smaller homes, such as these of “shotgun” design. In these, the length of the house is open so that if one fired a shotgun through the front door the shot would go all the way to the back wall.
This mansion belonged to the New Orleans Saints star quarterback Archie Manning. Here his two sons, Peyton and Eli were raised, also star quarterbacks.
This is typical of most mansions in the area – large homes on lots not much larger. Only a few were on very large lots.
From the Garden District we returned to the St. Charles streetcar line to ride to its end and back to the French Quarter where we had a very late lunch before returning to the RV park. We saved the remaining sights of the city for “next time.”
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