Thursday, April 7

Just got back from doing a tourist city bus trip to the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Tons of history of the city, Katrina, streets, eateries, booze.  It took over 4 hours that included many stops, a bakery for Beignets, a rum distillery, etc.  The tasting of of the rum products included coffee which I had.  Renie order the Beignets and I actually ate one.  Good, but like most pastry's, I won't have again.  The guide took us down to the the heavily damaged area of the flood.  It is mostly cleaned up now, but could happen again. I got a look at the original engineering of the wall design and I am surprised it lasted as long as it did.  Basic civil engineering practices were compromised for cost.  Too bad.  They might get it right the second time. To a tune of several billion dollars.  

We ate lunch at Napoleon House.  Waited in line for about 30 minutes. Their specialty are sandwiches, signature is called a Muffuletta.  I have not idea how that is pronounced, but it is basically a huge Italian sandwich.  It was great, but way tooooooo large.  1/2 of it came home with us for later.  And we both had the other half.  

The pictures of an interesting cemetery.  So, the water table in the city is only a couple of feet/yards deep.  As a result, bodies would just float if they were buried. So, they solved that issue by planting folks above ground in these coffers.  Whole families, relatives, and friends could be added to one of these coffers.  They would actually get very hot inside, the bodies composed (cremated) over a short time.  When another passed and put into the coffer, the original pieces left were swept into a bag, dropped in a hole  in the coffer, and the new body set in place.  Interesting.  

Here are some pictures:

 

Rum distillery

waiting for the bus 

Down town