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Nov. 22nd, 2010 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogMy trip to New Orleans lasted from Monday morning through to Tuesday morning. A couple of naps were involved. I'm pleased that timing worked out the way it did; it meant that I was driving in daylight as I went along the stretch of Route 55 that rises up on a concrete causeway out of the swamp between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain. That is some neat land!
It was mid-morning when I finally parked me car at the Greyhound station southwest of the French Quarter and got parking situated.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danaeris had already left the hotel for programming at her conference, so after getting my stuff settled in to our hotel (which was at the corner of Bourbon Street and Canal, a fantastic, if somewhat noisy, place), I wandered off to explore the area.
Even on the way to the hotel, I was struck by some of the neat architecture and art. One hotel had a 12 story tall clarinet, painted in faux-3D style up the side of the building, and any number of buildings from the turn of the 20th century through to the twenties and thirties dotted the streets. But getting into the historical district itself was even more amazing. What for Chicago is an old building would be only middle aged there in the quarter. The whole area is filled with buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the late 1700s. In fact, one building, the Old Ursuline Convent, is the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley and was completed in 1752.
Along Canal Street itself, the border of the quarter, rows of tourist shops line the sidewalks with names like Hippie Gypsy, VooDoo Mart, and Zydeco Jambalaya. Vintage street cars run up and down Canal as well, beautiful pieces of the past all in wood and brass.
Moving into the quarter, I passed places like the House of Blues, and saw bookstores and antique stores everywhere. I went into one that looked particularly beautiful, Beckham's Bookshop, and took a few pictures of the interior with the owner's permission, as well as one of the owner, with whom I chatted with about John King Books in Detroit. I shot picture after picture of buildings with wrought-iron balconies and galleries extending out over the sidewalks.
Eventually I made it to Jackson Square, where I shot pictures of buskers, hot dog vendors, and more architecture, including the imposing Sant Louis Cathedral, towering over the plaza on the northwest side of the square. I shot some interior pictures too of course. The inside was beautiful, covered in statuary and paintings. I'm certainly not a Catholic; my spiritual beliefs are eclectic at best. But the cathedral seemed like a special enough place that I lit a candle there for a dear friend. Who knows? It couldn't hurt.
Moving on to the interior of the square, I shot some pictures of birds in the fountain and had a conversation with a woman who was doing the same thing. Turns out her husband was in town for a conference and she was out seeing the sights. By coincidence, she graduated from the same law school my brother was going to in Michigan before transferring to Chicago.
I walked northwest toward Saint Louis Cemetary No.1, intending to take a look at Marie Laveau's tomb. On the way, I met up with the woman I'd talked to in the square. After I told her about the cemetary and the tomb, she'd decided she wanted to see them too, so we walked together and pointed out some of the gorgeous residential building architecture along the northern part of the quarter to each other. I was amused by a house that had a small, rusted plaque stating "On this site in 1897 nothing happened".
The cemetery itself was quite unlike anything I've ever seen. Tombs of every vintage scattered haphazardly around as though they'd been dropped randomly from above by a giant hand. Some tombs were so old and worn there was nothing left anymore to say who might be inside. Some towered overhead, and some were only a few feet tall, looking almost like little stone doghouses. Or, disturbingly, ovens. There were tombs of brick, stone, and stucco. Tombs covered in alabaster-white plaster, left as bare piles of brick, or even some mixture of the two where sheets of facing material were broken into bits or falling off whole. Marie's tomb was fairly obvious; the front and sides were covered in 'X's left by visitors, and the doorway was awash in offerings of coins, beads, bread, candy, flowers, and more. I left a few coins of my own, then scratched my own three 'X's and made a wish.
This kind of interaction with this tomb is such a huge part of the history of the site, and is so directly tied to the way people engage it on a day to day basis, I felt ok about doing that. I thought later about a little talk I'd had with Dana about the inherently finite nature of buildings and architecture and other things, and about feeling a certain level of acceptance when the effects of time are clearly visible on a structure, or when an old building is finally lost to passing years. It's part of what gives them value and meaning.
My new acquaintance and I were lucky enough to bump into a tour group that was walking through the cemetery and who said something about how the gates were about to be closed and locked. Someone was yelling something about that in the distance, but I hadn't paid the loud unintelligible voice any attention. As I found out later from the tour guide, we would not have been the first people to be locked inside the cemetery! We followed them out (I stopped long enough to pet a black cat who happened to step out from behind a tomb somewhere and look at us; it's always good to be nice to the cats) and watched the grounds keeper lock the door behind us.
From there, my friend and I went to Dauphine Street Books. She was looking for something in particular, a book of art by someone local who shared her last name. Myself, I ended up stopping and chatting with a woman who was sitting on the front steps of the store. She was a local musician named Lisa, who I talked with about the city, her experiences there, her travels to Chicago to perform, and where to get good food (she pointed me at Mother's).
And after that, I finally went back to the hotel. I think I must have spent some time going through my schedule book and figuring out what I wanted to attend the next day. I'll end this post here and write about the rest of what I did in the next one. The rest of the days will be condensed together a bit, I think, as my sense of timeline is a little bit muddled, and I don't need to go through everything in fine detail like this anyway. I just wanted to write down something a little more in depth about my first day in New Orleans.
It was mid-morning when I finally parked me car at the Greyhound station southwest of the French Quarter and got parking situated.
danaeris had already left the hotel for programming at her conference, so after getting my stuff settled in to our hotel (which was at the corner of Bourbon Street and Canal, a fantastic, if somewhat noisy, place), I wandered off to explore the area. Even on the way to the hotel, I was struck by some of the neat architecture and art. One hotel had a 12 story tall clarinet, painted in faux-3D style up the side of the building, and any number of buildings from the turn of the 20th century through to the twenties and thirties dotted the streets. But getting into the historical district itself was even more amazing. What for Chicago is an old building would be only middle aged there in the quarter. The whole area is filled with buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the late 1700s. In fact, one building, the Old Ursuline Convent, is the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley and was completed in 1752.
Along Canal Street itself, the border of the quarter, rows of tourist shops line the sidewalks with names like Hippie Gypsy, VooDoo Mart, and Zydeco Jambalaya. Vintage street cars run up and down Canal as well, beautiful pieces of the past all in wood and brass.
Moving into the quarter, I passed places like the House of Blues, and saw bookstores and antique stores everywhere. I went into one that looked particularly beautiful, Beckham's Bookshop, and took a few pictures of the interior with the owner's permission, as well as one of the owner, with whom I chatted with about John King Books in Detroit. I shot picture after picture of buildings with wrought-iron balconies and galleries extending out over the sidewalks.
Eventually I made it to Jackson Square, where I shot pictures of buskers, hot dog vendors, and more architecture, including the imposing Sant Louis Cathedral, towering over the plaza on the northwest side of the square. I shot some interior pictures too of course. The inside was beautiful, covered in statuary and paintings. I'm certainly not a Catholic; my spiritual beliefs are eclectic at best. But the cathedral seemed like a special enough place that I lit a candle there for a dear friend. Who knows? It couldn't hurt.
Moving on to the interior of the square, I shot some pictures of birds in the fountain and had a conversation with a woman who was doing the same thing. Turns out her husband was in town for a conference and she was out seeing the sights. By coincidence, she graduated from the same law school my brother was going to in Michigan before transferring to Chicago.
I walked northwest toward Saint Louis Cemetary No.1, intending to take a look at Marie Laveau's tomb. On the way, I met up with the woman I'd talked to in the square. After I told her about the cemetary and the tomb, she'd decided she wanted to see them too, so we walked together and pointed out some of the gorgeous residential building architecture along the northern part of the quarter to each other. I was amused by a house that had a small, rusted plaque stating "On this site in 1897 nothing happened".
The cemetery itself was quite unlike anything I've ever seen. Tombs of every vintage scattered haphazardly around as though they'd been dropped randomly from above by a giant hand. Some tombs were so old and worn there was nothing left anymore to say who might be inside. Some towered overhead, and some were only a few feet tall, looking almost like little stone doghouses. Or, disturbingly, ovens. There were tombs of brick, stone, and stucco. Tombs covered in alabaster-white plaster, left as bare piles of brick, or even some mixture of the two where sheets of facing material were broken into bits or falling off whole. Marie's tomb was fairly obvious; the front and sides were covered in 'X's left by visitors, and the doorway was awash in offerings of coins, beads, bread, candy, flowers, and more. I left a few coins of my own, then scratched my own three 'X's and made a wish.
This kind of interaction with this tomb is such a huge part of the history of the site, and is so directly tied to the way people engage it on a day to day basis, I felt ok about doing that. I thought later about a little talk I'd had with Dana about the inherently finite nature of buildings and architecture and other things, and about feeling a certain level of acceptance when the effects of time are clearly visible on a structure, or when an old building is finally lost to passing years. It's part of what gives them value and meaning.
My new acquaintance and I were lucky enough to bump into a tour group that was walking through the cemetery and who said something about how the gates were about to be closed and locked. Someone was yelling something about that in the distance, but I hadn't paid the loud unintelligible voice any attention. As I found out later from the tour guide, we would not have been the first people to be locked inside the cemetery! We followed them out (I stopped long enough to pet a black cat who happened to step out from behind a tomb somewhere and look at us; it's always good to be nice to the cats) and watched the grounds keeper lock the door behind us.
From there, my friend and I went to Dauphine Street Books. She was looking for something in particular, a book of art by someone local who shared her last name. Myself, I ended up stopping and chatting with a woman who was sitting on the front steps of the store. She was a local musician named Lisa, who I talked with about the city, her experiences there, her travels to Chicago to perform, and where to get good food (she pointed me at Mother's).
And after that, I finally went back to the hotel. I think I must have spent some time going through my schedule book and figuring out what I wanted to attend the next day. I'll end this post here and write about the rest of what I did in the next one. The rest of the days will be condensed together a bit, I think, as my sense of timeline is a little bit muddled, and I don't need to go through everything in fine detail like this anyway. I just wanted to write down something a little more in depth about my first day in New Orleans.
