New Orleans - Saturday

We spent Saturday in New Orleans wandering all over again.  We hit a place called Mother's for breakfast.  Again, Mike had been there earlier in the week for lunch, and a friend said it was the best place around for breakfast.  Anyway, two huge sloppy egg, ham and cheese biscuits later (they claim their baked ham is the best in the world) we were off for the day.  And yes, the ham was delicious.

One of the things I wanted to see while we were there was the cemeteries.  Because the water table is so high they generally don't bury people in the ground, the bodies would simply float back up.  So the cemeteries are all above ground and the crypts are very fascinating.

We took a 100 year old streetcar out to the garden district to check out the Lafayette Cemetery.  We came across one marker with 3 family members that died just days apart - most likely from yellow fever.  Interestingly, today families have to wait 366 days between crypt openings to allow for sufficient time for the bodies to "cook" down.  So, many family have two crypts side by side in case multiple family members die within a year of each other.  There is lots more to the whole cemetery bit, but that's a conversation for another day.

After Lafayette Cemetery we found ourselves wandering around the French Quarter again.  I wanted to go check out St. Louis cemetery.  Once we got there we discovered that you couldn't enter without a tour guide - new regulation to cut down on vandalism.  There is a very famous voodoo queen buried there and legend has it that if you mark her grave with 3 x's and ask for a wish granted she may do so.  If she does then you are supposed to return and leave her an offering.  Apparently this was quite popular with the homeless population as many of the offerings were bottles of alcohol or food.  So, the cemetery is now closed unless with a guide.  Anyway, Mike was hesitant to just tag along on a tour group, so we abandoned the cemetery and opted for a little horse and buggy tour, which interestingly enough, took us to St. Louis cemetery.  And it was very interesting, lots of cool stories.

Let's see... that gets us to lunch (more po boys), then the Louisiana State History Museum (very cool), a trip to Pat O'Brien's for their famous hurricanes, and that pretty much killed the day.  Cleaned up a bit, and back out to dinner at Kingfish.  

For the late night entertainment we wandered up Frenchman street, found a bar without a cover and listened to a jazz band for a few minutes.  Frenchman street is apparently the hangout for the locals - lots of music and fun, but without the bizarre craziness of Bourbon street.  

One more stop at Cafe Du Monde the following morning and then back to Austin.  We packed a lot in during our two days, and this barely scratches the surface.  Tons of fun, tons of pictures.  Wishing we could sneak away again.