We walk to the famous French Quarter, the "Vieux carré" - 84 blocks classified as National Historic District and managed by the NPS. Rangers offer free walking tours from Jackson Square, we miss the one that just departed and decide to explore it on our own, with my book as a non-talking guide. The atmosphere is electrifying - music everywhere emanating from windows, bars and corner cafés. An eclectic mix of zydeco, blues, grass, jazz makes it almost impossible to walk straight, dancing becomes a natural reaction, not a choice. The rational checker board layout typical of French and Spanish colonial architecture makes it easy to meander through the streets without worry of getting lost. We stop at the major places with historic significance: le Presbytère, St. Louis Cathedral, the Ursuline convent and the Old US Mint. We look inside the old Royal Pharmacy with the soda fountain and the Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop tavern on the corner with St. Philip St. On Bourbon Street, Creole cottages in various states of (dis)repair line the sidewalks. And no, it has nothing to do with a type of spirit, Bourbon Street was named after the Spanish house of the Borbones by Spanish colonialists. When the lights on this street turn too red for us, we switch to Royal St., a classic postcard-perfect picture of New Orleans. The ornate cast-iron balconies here have hanging plants and flower pots. I stop outside an art gallery that attracts my eyes and the painter comes out to hand me a brochure on his upcoming exhibits and small chat (www.paintedalive.com). We have lunch at Café Beignet (more of an appetizer than a true lunch) and then continue up "Hippie Hill" - the levee along the Mississippi - to the riverwalk. We are heading to the Aquarium, at the end of the riverwalk you can clearly see the Harrod's Casino in the Central Business District (CBD).
Next to the Aquarium is the Imax theater, featuring a documentary on Katrina. We buy the combo ticket for both. The documentary proves to be extremely interesting, if not moving to tears, making a poignant case for why this ordeal happened. It's a one-sided view against urban development that forced the city to build up levees in order to avoid floodings from the Mississippi river into what have become residential areas. By doing so, it forced the river to flood into the wetlands that once protected the area. An area of wetlands equal to the size of Delaware has been lost to this, and hurricanes today hit harder because the vegetation that once protected the city has simply disappeared. It has been proven that for every mile of wetland lost, the tornado-type winds generated by Katrina would have slowed down by a certain mph ratio, and by the time the hurrican hit the city it would have had half of its original strength. It would have cause only half of the damage it did. The problem, therefore, is not that the levees broke, but that they are there in the first place. Any attempt to meddle with Mother Nature has devastating consequences. If we only learned to leave her alone...
The aquarium was interesting, especially the Amazon Forest exhibit, the playful sea otters and the clumsy penguins.
The French Quarter was largely spared by Katrina, the same is not true for the rest of the city and the CBD, where next to classy hotels you can still see boarded up buildings, cracked walls and broken glass. Reconstruction is going on at a steady pace downtown, the same is not true at the outskirts, where the mountains of rubble are still as tall as the former homes. After walking for 6 hours straight, we head back to the RV - still intact - and leave the city. We will come back one day, especially to tour the wetlands on an airboat and to see the plantations. And of course, one cannot miss Mardi Gras at least once in a lifetime, and a voodoo tour of New Orleans with the spooky St. Louis cemetery on Halloween.
Leaving New Orleans to go east also means leaving Louisiana. We enter Mississippi at dusk and stop in Gulfport, MS for dinner. Since we cannot see the white sandy beaches stretching from here to Biloxi at night, we will then continue to Mobile, AL. Right before entering the freeway, Petr runs over some sort of animal on the street, blood splatter is all over the left side of the RV and we cannot even see what it was. By the time we turn around to take a look, other cars must have ripped the poor thing apart and we find no trace of it. We are a bit shaken up by this.
St. Louis Cathedral.
The Old US Mint.
Chartres Street.
A horse carriage, one way to tour the quarter instead of walking it.
Santa's Vespa - a cop dressed up as Santa drove to the station on it but I had no time to capture him as well.
The New Orleans Police rides Vespas.
Cast-iron balcony.
My next bycicle.
Another balcony with hanging plants.
Cargo ship on the Mississippi river.
An exhibit at the aquarium.
A lion fish.
Shark!
The business district.