Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Big Easy

Jen and I spent the last few days in New Orleans. I had to go there for a work meeting and we decided to make a little getaway out of it. We had a great time seeing the sites. There are so many interesting things to see I took about 500 pictures with my itchy shutter finger. Below are just a few of them.


These pictures are in the French Quarter - the top is at Riverfront Park with the Mississippi River and Greater New Orleans Bridge in the background. The bottom picture is in Jackson Square with the St. Louis Cathedral in the background. This is the oldest Cathedral in the U.S.

This guy told us his name is "Marzipan". He paints himself silver and hangs out in Jackson Square pretending he is a statue. If you put money in his donation can, he comes to life and plays his guitar. We found out that he also comes to life if you try to steal his guitar.

One of the stops on our tour was the New Orleans Botanical Garden. There were a lot of beautiful plants and flowers there. I don't remember what kind of plant this is, but I thought it was worth posting here.

This is a house that was flooded during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. You can see the brown mark on it which is the point the flood water reached and stayed for a while until it was able to be pumped out of the city. Some of the houses in the lowest areas had the watermark on the pitched roof. The marking on the door shows the date that the house was reached by the military rescue unit and (9/22/05), the unit number that searched the house (1340). R2 means they recovered 2 people and the zero means there were none dead.


Since New Orleans is below sea level, graves are above ground. We went to St Louis Cemetery. In the top picture the tour guide is pointing out the rusting on the iron surrounding the tomb. This is how high the water was in this cemetery when the city flooded after the hurricane.


We went on a tour of the Oak Alley Plantation. There are 28 huge oak trees that extend from the mansion to the Mississippi River. I've never seen oak trees get this big in Utah. The trees were planted in the early 1700s and will apparently live another 300 years. The mansion was built in 1837. In addition to the big oaks, there are beautiful gardens that surround the mansion.

2 comments:

R. Jeffrey Davis said...

Way cool pictures. I love Jenny's cool purse. Those oak trees are indeed amazing. Way to go, CottonMan on a great weekend getaway

Jill said...

Dangit! He beat me again!