It proved to be a pretty mind numbing drive as massive sections of the road are on these elevated bridges (over swamp land):
The bridges are pretty cool. They go for miles though - one of them is at least 18 miles long. Seems like that should be some sort of record!
We did get to cross the Mississippi river, which is pretty cool for someone from the UK:
Once we finally arrived in New Orleans we started trying to find our hotel. Unfortunately the sat nav seemed to only want to take us across a street where the carnival was in full swing. After 2 hours of driving and the most useless directions (ever) from the receptionist at the hotel - we were literally ready to give up and go home, we finally made it. For future reference - receptionist - i10 doesn't cross the Mississippi (at least not in New Orleans).....the exit you're looking for is US90 SB then exit 11c. Don't know how many times we tried to explain this to the girl when we finally arrived - but she still didn't get it!
It had taken so long to get to the hotel that the carnival had actually finished by the time we checked in at 11 pm! We decided to go grab some cajun food (Jambalaya in my case) and head to bed. We had gotten to see some of the carnival from the other side of the road whilst in the car - the sights and sounds were pretty cool so we were exciting already.
On Saturday morning we decided to go for a stroll around New Orleans. We started in the Garden District, which is uptown and where our hotel was located. After grabbing some coffee and a breakfast sandwich we headed out West on St Charles Avenue (one of the main carnival parade routes).
The architecture is very different from Houston - much older with lots of trees and greenery around the neighbourhoods. The Garden District is a pretty nice area of New Orleans (about as nice as it gets I'm lead to believe). The amount of crime in New Orleans is pretty high, and we'd been warned about it on several occasions by lots of different people. Walking around on a Saturday morning in the sunshine it's hard to believe it but never the less we opted to take one of the guided walking tours around the Lafayette cemetery as apparently there are lots of attacks even uptown.
The cemetery has been the setting for lots of really famous movies over the years. It was really recognisable when you were walking around! At one point we even got to see inside one of the tombs!
The way they work is pretty interesting. There are basically 3 tiers inside. The top one is for the most recent dead. Once they're been in there at least a year (apparently that's how long it takes for a body to decompose). After the next person in the family dies, the first person is moved down to the middle tier and the new dead person gets put on top. Finally, when a third person dies the person (specifically their skeleton as that's all that is left) on the middle tier is "dumped" into the hole below and the everyone moves down a tier to make way. Apparently this whole procedure is repeated until the hole below the tomb is full. They can take approximately 80 people!
Some of the tombs are painted. Historically people would paint them the same colour as their house to make them easily identifiable. Apparently people use a limewash to deter the fading caused by the sun. The colour, when applied like this, is good for 50 years apparently.
After the tour, we circled back round the Garden District via Magazine St, which was full of lots of small bohemian type shops and cafes. It makes a welcome change to the big strip malls and chains you find in Houston!
After a lot of walking we crossed back under the highway and through the business district to get to the French Quarter. This is the old part of New Orleans that you tend to see in films. In particular the main attraction is Bourbon Street.
If I'm being honest, Bourbon St was a bit of a let down. It was a pretty seedy street filled with night clubs and strip clubs. I'm not really a prude but it's just not my cup of tea. If I had to compare it to somewhere in Europe, it's a lot like Ibiza, Malia, Malaga etc.
We decided to bail out once we thought we'd seen enough and head back Uptown to watch the carnivals from there. On the long walk back we got a taster of the floats - they were being escorted by Police through dowwtown New Orleans - I guess in order to make it in time!
The central business district made for a nice stopping place to grab a drink:
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