Chapter 7 – New Orleans

Jackson Square

We arrived in New Orleans (N’Awlins to the locals) for the Jazz and Heritage Festival late at night and headed straight to our hostel. We arrived at a low lit building which looked to us like a mental asylum; the St Vincent Hostel (As it turned out it used to be an orphanage until the 50’s). After two attempts to find a clean room to sleep in, verbal abuse from a half naked drugged war vet in a wheelchair and the crushing of many cockroaches we finally found a room that had been tidied, even though it was nowhere near clean. Turns out we should have paid better attention to the online reviews. Finally exhaustion kicked in and we fell asleep.

St Vincents

The next day our luck changed and we found a nice room in the center of the French Quarter, which they gave to us for half price. We took it and happily left our creepy backpackers behind.

Voodoo

New Orleans is a great city and if you are heading to the States then it is well worth seeing. It’s an old city and has a very mixed history involving the French, Spanish and African people. All of these cultures mingling created the city as it is today with its rich mix of food, peoples, voodoo and of course the music!

We spent three days at the renowned Jazz fest listening to bands on each of the 12 stages and enjoying great Southern cuisine. The amazing line up consisted of local brass bands, blues & jazz 

Deep fried crawfish

legends and gospel choirs. Some of the headliners we saw were The Beach Boys, Tom Petty & the Heart Breakers, Bruce Springsteen, Gomez, Iron & Wine and Celo Green. After Jazz Fest we decided to stay on a bit longer to enjoy the city. 

The Boss

Haunted tours

Original LaLaurie mansion entrance

 The heavily populated and boozy Bourbon Street was crazy, just the people watching alone is worth checking it out. We went on a haunted tour around the French quarter. The tour was great but it did disturb our sleep for days. One of the stories worth checking out is of the LaLaurie mansion, which was around the corner from our hotel. Until recently, the house was owned by Nicholas Cage. In all the years he owned it he only slept there once! It originally was home to the serial killer Madame LaLaurie and her husband Dr Leonard LaLaurie during the early 19^th century. Just a warning that this is not a story for the faint-hearted in case you go hunting for it.

Louisiana swamp

We headed out of the city for a look at the surrounding swampy wetlands. We met a couple of 12 foot alligators called Brutus and Big Al (both around 50 years old), we learnt a lot about their environment, and learnt how catch crawfish (a small type of crayfish).

Brutus 

  

The city still seems to be healing from the devastating Katrina although you wouldn't know it when walking around the touristy areas. After visiting the Museum it seems that the event was censored and underreported not just around the world but in the USA as well. 

After over a week of amazing southern food, music and hospitality, we headed southeast in search of Harry.