City to Swamp

Sunday, 31 March (Part I)
Aviation arbor Famcamp — NAS JRB New Orleans — Belle Chasse, Louisiana
Temps: Lo 58F / Hi 80F (14C / 27C)

It’s raining; it’s pouring.  But it doesn’t really matter; we’re done for the day.  Besides, this was a day at home and we had no sightseeing plans to be rained out.  Işıl checked out of her hotel this morning, and spent the day with us here before Mui took her to the airport for her return flight to Turkey (via Chicago).  The storms moving through the area held off long enough for her plane to take off from NOLA; she’s already in the air on the next leg of her journey home.

We’ll be heading out tomorrow.  So, Mui spent the afternoon working on pre-departure chores.  We’re all set to leave the big city for a quiet state park in Mississippi.  But before we get there, a post to wrap up our visit to NOLA.

Friday, 29 March

This was our day to do the walking tour of the Garden District, a NOLA neighborhood that is best known for well-preserved mansions built by the wealthy in the period between 1832-1900.  Initially developed as a series of plantations, the land was later parceled off and sold.  From these parcels the original neighborhood was born with two large residential lots to a block.

Picking up Işıl from her hotel, we hopped on the St Charles Streetcar for the ride to the bottom end of the district.  Just past Lee Circle, our car blew a fuse, showering sparks everywhere.  After a short delay that brought streetcar traffic in either direction to a standstill, we boarded another car and completed our ride.

Starting our walk at Lafayette Cemetery, we continued from there to each of the 23 houses on the map, reading the brief descriptions included in the brochure.  Beautiful homes — from Italianate and Greek Revival mansions with 20+ rooms, to NOLA’s typical shotgun row houses; and Victorians with gingerbread trim.  What I liked the most was the “iron lace” decorating the balconies of many of the houses.

Lafayette Cemetery — laid out in 1833 by the original residents of the Garden District.  Within its
first 20 years, the cemetery was almost filled with those who succumbed to yellow fever.

I’ll share a few photos from some of the houses that charmed me.  If you’d like to see more and read the captions, visit my online gallery by clicking this link for the Garden District photo series.

2627 Coliseum Street: The gingerbread trim and elaborate iron work flatter this beautiful mansion, which is said to be owned by Sandra Bullock.

1331 Third Street: Decorated in iron lace, this home was built in 1850 for a prominent cotton merchant who was president of the Cotton Exchange and also served as the NOLA postmaster.

1331 Third Street – backyard of the home in the above photos.

2523 Prytania Street: Our Mother of Perpetual Help was once an active Catholic chapel.
Previous owners include Anne Rice (used it as a setting for her novel, Violin) and Nicholas Cage.

During our stroll through the Garden District, we took a break to have lunch.  We ended up at Gott Gourmet, where Işıl satisfied her craving for an American hot dog, and Mui and I enjoyed casual fare.  Mui ordered a muffaletta, a traditional New Orleans sandwich that originated amongst the immigrant Italian population of the city; and I had a shrimp BLT wrap.  The food was quite tasty; and our sidewalk table provided a spot from which to people-watch while we ate our lunch.

Muffaletta, Shrimp BLT Wrap, and Original Chicago Style Hot Dog.
[the two photos on the right are courtesy of Gott Gourmet’s website]

Though Gott Gourmet had something to satisfy each of us, it did not have dessert.  No problem.  I had spied a “sweet boutique” called Sucré across the street and already had plans to check it out.  It was a difficult decision, but we passed on the gelato and treated ourselves to tempting miniature cakes instead.

My Xocolat Sucré (far right) and Mui’s Tiffany (top left) were served on the same plate;
Işıl’s petit strawberry was plated separately.

With a stroll along the Riverwalk in the French Quarter next on our agenda, after dessert we headed to the Washington Street stop to catch the next streetcar.  The stop in the direction of Canal Street was crowded, so we took a car heading in the opposite direction for a few stops before getting off and boarding a car heading in the right direction.  The ride was crowded and noisy, and drained what little energy we had left.  By the time we arrived at Canal Street, we were all ready to call it quits.  Dropping off Işıl at her hotel, we walked to the parking lot where we had left the car and returned home to recharge our batteries.

Saturday, 30 March

A beautiful day of sunshine and blue skies greeted us for our last day of sightseeing. 

To show Işıl a different side of Louisiana, we started off with a boat tour of the Honey Island Swamp with Pearl River Eco-Tours, which we chose based on reviews on Trip Advisor, and the fact that this operator offers a small skiff experience instead of a noisy airboat ride.

Along the Canal near the launch site are abandoned boats like this one.                  
They landed here from 30 miles (48 km) away during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.             

As luck would have it, our tour was the first full one of the season, and we had 20 other people in our group.  A nice enough tour, but I was disappointed when the captain didn’t stop at some of the few wildlife sightings we had — a lone great blue heron, a Kingfisher that was posing nicely on a branch, and turtles sunning themselves on the logs.  On the plus side, Captain John did point out two pairs of nesting yellow-crowned night herons in the bayou, and we did see several young alligators in a canal not far from our launch site.  He also talked extensively about the eco-system through which he was taking us, and the people who choose to make their homes on the banks of bayous.  In the end, it was worth the $23/person price for the tour.

Again, I’m sharing a few photos and a video, but you can click this link to see more in the series of photos I posted online.

The captain estimated this gator to be about 5 feet (1.5 m) long; hence about five years old.

This pair of youngsters sunning themselves on the banks of the canal gave us our best sighting.

The Great Blue Heron was a drive-by sighting as the boat moved into one of the bayous.

A bayou is a slow-moving river.  As we traveled further into the swamp on one of the bayous …

… we learned that bald cypress trees hold onto their dry leaves until new buds
push them off the branches in the spring; and we saw a lot of bald cypress
knees peeking out of the shallow bayou.  Also …

… sightings of water moccasins like this one made me happy that our boat was covered.  And we …

… caught a glimpse of Heckle and Jeckle, a pair of nesting blue-crowned night herons,
who did not cooperate for a photo op.

I’ll wrap up our tour with a short ride through Honey Island Swamp.

26-second boat ride in the swamp.

Our plans included lunch at Café du Bon Temps, which describes itself as serving Cajun/Creole dishes from the Louisiana kitchen.  Maybe it does … but it was closed.  So, we postponed lunch until our return to NOLA and drove into Slidell to check out Bead Town.  That deserves its own post.  Moving along …

Back in NOLA, we parked the car and walked to the French Quarter for a lunch of red beans and rice at Café Maspero.  With a cruise ship in town on an already busy Saturday before Easter, there was a line to get in, but the wait wasn’t too bad.  Since Işıl had expressed an interest in having beignets after lunch, we ordered the appetizer portion of this Creole dish, which is traditionally served on Mondays.  Why?  Because Mondays were washday and this dish could simmer on the stove all day while the women were busy scrubbing clothes.

For beignets, we decided to go to Café Beignet, which is located inside the Musical Legends Park on Bourbon Street.  A three-piece jazz band provided entertainment as we enjoyed our hot beignets and beverages with less hub-bub than what we would have experienced at Café du Monde.

(You can tell I was drained from the bustling French Quarter — I didn’t take photos at either Café Maspero or Café Beignet, and had to resort to screen captures from their websites.)

Our return home ended up being a bit of an adventure.  After picking up the car, we headed out of the city as usual, only to find the traffic at our exit backed up considerably.  So, we drove back into the city and made our way to the ferry terminal at the bottom of Canal Street.  A short ride across the Mississippi put us back on the right track and soon we were home to enjoy a quiet evening.