*: A NEW ORLEANS CITY TOUR.......

Thursday, March 8, 2012

A NEW ORLEANS CITY TOUR.......

If you read the fat-fest that was my last post, then you already know how much weight I gained during our 7 day stay in The Big Easy....boy, if I lived there, I'd wind up somewhere like this, waaay before my time..........

That's right..an early grave. And SPEAKING of graves...did you know that all of the cemeteries in my beloved New Orleans, Louisiana are like the one pictured above? No graves 6 feet under, like the rest of the country, because New Orleans is actually below sea level! And I found it fascinating that most people, when they are buried in New Orleans, are not entombed in a coffin, because these crypts are built for whole families, and a coffin just would take up too much space!

I guess the money saved on an expensive coffin goes into building one of these beautiful crypts....look at the angel on top of this one....

I found this Mother Teresa quote and statue quite moving......

It says,....

"If you pray, you will have faith

And if you have faith, you will love

And if you love, you will serve, and

If you serve, you will have peace".

Thank you, Mother Teresa

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On about the fifth day of our New Orleans stay, Wink and I decided to hop on one of the awesome and vintage St. Charles Avenue trolleys and take in the Uptown/Garden districts. I love these trolleys so much, I could ride them forever! Unfortunately, they'd probably kick my sorry arse off, eventually........

First stop, the gorgeous Loyola and Tulane Universities.....we are always drawn to college campuses, for some reason.....

(Hmmmmm....maybe I can convince Little Miss Thing to do her graduate work down here?)....

Look at how tiny this Live Oak tree on the Tulane campus makes Wink look!.....

Here's how festive New Orleans is, right after Mardi Gras.....beads in the trees, everywhere.....

Next, we headed into the Garden District, truly my favorite part of the city. Stately homes, each prettier than the next, surrounded by incredible, well manicured gardens.....Azaleas in bloom.....

Camelias...

Such welcome sights for our winter-weary Upstate New York eyes.....

House envy........this one was having a little bit of concrete work done.....

This little cat followed us everywhere..almost took her home!......

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The next day, we rented a car and took a little jaunt out of town, along the Great Mississippi River Road....had to do a little detour, as we were told that Leonardo DiCaprio was shooting a movie............

If you follow the river about an hour north of town, that's where most of the remaining large plantations are located.....here's Oak Alley Plantation, where the movie Interview With a Vampire (starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt) was filmed...look familiar?...

Gotta love that canopy of Live Oaks, over 300 years old!

We decided to take a guided tour of the plantation next door, which was called The Laura Plantation...very Creole, and very different from the more traditional Oak Alley above (I toured Oak Alley last time we were here).........the Creole plantation owners loved to use vibrant colors on their homes.....

A view from the front porch...all of these homes face the Mississippi River, but there are levees now to protect from flooding, of course....

Beautifully maintained boxwood hedged gardens............

One of the few photos I took inside the house....because I'm ALL about the kitchen! (actually, this was a pantry...kitchens were always in a separate buildings, both to keep the main house cooler and to prevent fires)..........

A kitchen garden...........

I have some photos of the existing slave quarters, but I'm not posting them today, because I find them too depressing for words....but here are some banana plants!..

And last....some grapefruit blossoms....I can still smell their sweetness.....

Thanks so much for coming along with us on our trip down south.....OOPS! one more photo for you.....I made these chocolate peanut butter cup cupcakes for some dear friends upon our return, as a thank you for taking such good care of our home while we were away--they were SUCH a hit--somebody told me that I should go into the cupcake business! Too funny! What do YOU think?