Home sweet home

What an epic 13 and a half months we’ve just had, in 22 different countries. And this is my 70^th post. Time has flown by and now we are home, we can take a breath and give ourselves some time to reflect (and pay off the credit card bill).

Our travelling experience was one of the best things we’ve ever done, and we were lucky enough to do it as a couple and with some cash under our belt, although it’s a miracle we managed to stay together after spending 24/7 in each other’s company.

The most common question we’ve been asked since we got back is ‘where was your favourite place?’ This is impossible to answer because everywhere was so different. I have to discount India because that place is off the scale and completely incomparable.

Favourite places
 
Mexico  - for the weather, people, food, beaches, tequila, diving, colour, cities and music.

Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia – for the nature, food, other travellers we met, (most of) the local people, and the interesting if horrific and sad history.

New Zealand – a stunningly beautiful place with lovely people, but very expensive.

Chile – gorgeous and very diverse countryside. 

Where we want to go back to because didn’t have enough time 

Australia. It’s massive (the size of Western Europe) and we barely touched the sides. There’s a lot more to see.

Fiji – so many fantastic islands to explore.

New Zealand – we rushed it, and it was winter in a camper van. We need to go in summer.

Brazil and Argentina – Awesome countries, but again, we didn’t have enough time to see them properly.

Where we probably wouldn’t go back to 

Bogota in Colombia, because we got robbed and because it’s not the most beautiful city in the world.

Mendoza in Argentina. We loved Argentina, but Mendoza is renowned for its wine (which is great), but not much else.

North Goa. Full of Brits on package holidays. We would go back to South Goa however. 

Worst experiences 

Getting robbed at knifepoint in Bogota was up there...especially when we realised that we’d also missed our flight to Rio de Janeiro soon after. 

Best experiences 

Learning to scuba dive in Bali, and pretty much all of our subsequent dives. We’ve found a new hobby that both of us really enjoy, and we have now joined a local club to carry it on. Swimming with whale sharks in Mexico and bull sharks in Fiji, both pretty amazing. Trekking to Machu Picchu, climbing a mountain in Nepal, chilling out on Gili Air, getting put on the next flight to Rio de Janeiro for free after we’d missed ours.

Scariest experiences 

We had this imaginary thermometer-type instrument, which we believed measured how close we were to death. It was dangerously high on several occasions. Diving with bull sharks in Fiji, being robbed in Colombia, going on the New York New York rollercoaster in Vegas, flying in the tiny 8 seater plane across Laos, drinking too much tequila in Cancun, getting lost in the desert in Rajasthan, being caught up in a huge earthquake in Oaxaca, getting vertigo on an Inca trail and almost falling off, capsizing while white water rafting in a class 4/5 river…all up there. 

Best food 

India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Penang in Malaysia. Insanely good food; be it high end or street food. We tended to stick to the street food and we didn’t have a bad experience luckily. 

Worst food 

Colombia - Almost impossible to find fresh fruit or vegetables. 

Strangest place 

Varanasi. The spiritual home for Hindus, and where they all want to go to die. We were able to watch people being cremated which was very uncomfortable for us. 

Most ‘out of my comfort zone’ places

Varanasi for the reasons above. Camping in a hut in a jungle in Borneo. Staying on a Cambodian island with no running water and no toilet. Sitting in the luggage compartment on a bus in Laos. Eating rats in Cambodia and bugs in Bangkok.  

Most unusual or exotic places

Myanmar is still not that widely visited as a tourist destination, and less is known about this country compared to other places. It was a beautiful, interesting country and they were probably the nicest people of all the different nationalities we met.

 
Peru still maintains a lot of its cultural identity, and much of the landscape is still untouched since the Spanish conquest. Much of it is preserved jungle and there are great efforts to excavate and preserve their ancient cities (such as Machu Picchu) and they prize their heritage, Incan or otherwise. Peruvian food is some of the best cuisine in the world, and they continue to eat llama, alpaca and guinea pig. 

We only saw a tiny part of Fiji, and we spent most of the time in the water, snorkelling, swimming and diving. The stunning underwater world was enough to make us want to go back.

 
Redang. This gorgeous Malaysian island was eye-wateringly expensive, but fabulous. With one of the best beaches we had seen, our experience was topped off when we were surrounded by turtles when we were snorkelling.

Iguacu Falls in Argentina and Brazil were breathtaking. They are some of the largest waterfalls in the world; even bigger than Niagara Falls.

San Pedro de Atacama in Chile is the driest desert in the world and awesome for star gazing and astronomy. 

Best activities 

Where do we start:

• diving with sharks, snorkelling over giant clams (around a metre long) in Fiji; 
• white water rafting in Colombia and Peru; 
• abseiling and zip lining through Colombia, Mexico and Peru; 
• cycling through Peru for 55km in the rain; 
• scuba diving through cenotes (underground caves) in Mexico; 
• night diving in Brazil; 
• diving the Great Barrier Reef; 
• tubing in Laos; 
• kayaking in Vietnam; 
• exploring caves in Australia, Vietnam, Fiji (underwater in the dark), New Zealand (with glow worms), Colombia (salt cathedral) and Nepal; 
• mud baths in Vietnam; 
• clambering through Viet Cong tunnels in Ho Chi Minh City; 
• waterfalls in Laos, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil and Argentina; 
• going on a boat ride under the Iguacu Falls and getting soaked to the skin; 
• morning yoga on Gili Air; 
• watching Brazil v Chile in a World Cup qualifier in Sao Paulo. 

 We are already getting itchy feet and saving hard for our next trip. I would recommend anyone thinking of travelling to go ahead and do it; you will not regret it! And to those asking us if we ‘found’ ourselves and had we changed, the answer is nope, we were never lost and nope, we haven’t changed that much!
However, travelling is eye-opening and massively humbling. It puts your problems into perspective and makes you realise how lucky you are. We saw some incredible things, and some pretty damn nasty things too. We met some inspiring people, ate some amazing food, (drank some potent booze), saw some epic sunrises and even more sunsets, sunbathed on some stunning beaches, had some great adventures and spent a shed load of cash, and I wouldn’t change any of it. Until next time…

 

 

New Orleans Part 2

Food tour

Fun

 

The next morning we were on the food tour. We learned the difference between Creole and Cajun cuisine, both prominent in this region. Cajun comes from ‘les Acadians’, who were the French settlers from the Canadian Acadia region, which today is up near Nova Scotia. When the British arrived in the 18^th Century, the Acadians were forced out and many settled all the way down in Louisiana. 

The Acadian people had to adapt to their new surroundings and made use of the very different geography, flora and fauna in Louisiana to devise a new type of cuisine. They learned to use every part of an animal, and came up with seasonings to enhance the food, making particular use of cayenne pepper.

House of Blues

Traditionally Creole people were descendants of French and Spanish settlers from back when New Orleans was ruled by the French. Over time Creole could mean someone descended from European settlers or someone of mixed race descent. Creole cuisine is a real fusion of all the cultures of the city and is regarded as being of a higher class than Cajun. Creole food was more diverse because of the mix of cultures and because of the ability to get more ingredients, being wealthier.

Our tour guide pointed out numerous restaurants specialising in a variety of different cooking styles with a range of prices. We spent some time in Antoine’s, a well-regarded French restaurant, which is rumoured to be the oldest restaurant in the US and which does a lunch special where the price is the current year, so this year it is $20.18 for 3 courses. It also does 25c cocktails, restricted to 3 per person. What a barg. 

Antoine's oysters - not Rockefeller

We had a full tour of the restaurant which is steeped in history. Opened in 1840, the restaurant can host over 700 guests in its 12 dining rooms, and was where the famous Oysters Rockefeller dish was invented. 

The dining rooms each have different names, and the Mystery Room is so-called because there it was possible to get your hands on alcohol during prohibition by going through a door in the ladies toilet to get to the secret room and returning with a cup full of alcohol. If anyone ever asked where it came from, the answer given would be ‘it’s a mystery to me’. 

Antoine’s has a huge wine cellar which holds around 25,000 bottles of wine. During Hurricane Katrina, the wine cellar was destroyed and rumour has it that the insurance company pay-out to Antoine’s was only around half of what the insurance company later got back through the sale of the salvaged wine.

French Market

As we walked our guide explained about New Orleans favourite foods and where to find them, such as:  

• pralines - a super sweet treat made from sugar, milk, butter and pecans;
• oysters; 
• po’ boys - a type of sandwich on baguette type bread, with tomato, lettuce, pickles and roast beef, although there are variations on this, and takes its name from when there was a workers’ strike in New Orleans in 1929 when the strikers were referred to as poor boys;
• gumbo - which is a dark ‘stew’ with chicken, sausage and shrimp and apparently isn’t gumbo without okra or a roux according to many Louisianians; 
• jambalaya - a one pot dish of seafood, sausage, chicken and veg, and made with rice;
• and muffulettas - which are round crusty sandwiches, with a marinated olive salad, salami, ham, Swiss cheese, provolone, and mortadella.

The final stop on the food tour was the French Market, via Café du Monde. Café du Monde was built in 1862 during the civil war when coffee was in short supply and chicory was added to it, which is still served today. The café is famed for its beignets, which are basically square doughnuts, covered in icing sugar and you can stand round the side of the café and watch the guys make them through the window. 

Beignets in Cafe du Monde

We decided to try beignets on Bourbon Street at Café Beignet. We were soon surrounded by little birds who were diving in and feeding off Baby D’s hands.

Beignets

These sweet treats were delicious with a coffee but we were finding sugar in strange places for hours afterwards.

The French Market is situated at the bottom of the French Quarter, near to Frenchmen Street. The market sells all sorts of products; it is 6 blocks of clothes, food, Mardi Gras merchandise and toys in the flea market. A great food spot is French Market Produce, just inside the market where there is a wide selection of local, organic produce. We treated ourselves to a gator sausage which was a blend of alligator tail meat and pork. Greasy but tasty.

Gator sausage

King Cake is a delicious Mardi Gras treat which takes like a cinnamon bun on steroids. It is made with brioche and is filled with chocolate, cinnamon and cream cheese. It is coated in gold, green and purple icing which has a lovely glittery sheen. The gold, purple and green icing are Mardi Gras colours; the gold meaning power, purple for justice and green representing faith. Inside the cake there is a tiny plastic baby and in the past the person that found the baby in their cake would be crowned the king or queen of Mardi Gras. These days though it is a sign of luck. We managed to get some King Cake on our last day in New Orleans from a great little café called Sucré, right in the middle of the French Quarter, where you can go upstairs and sit out on the balcony. Sucré was even selling King Cake ice cream, delish.

King cake

After our tour we grabbed a muffuletta from the Central Grocery on Decateur St opposite the French Market, which is where they were created. A whole one is huge, so we bought a quarter of one each, and they were pretty darn good. 

We hightailed it to the Pharmacy museum for the 1pm tour, between our free walking tours. Exhibits included tampons containing belladonna and opium, heroin used in painkillers and cough medicines, baby’s soothing syrups containing opium, some horrific looking needles and other surgical instruments, and even voodoo potions.

Opium tampons in the Pharmacy Museum

Entry was a bargain at $5 each and the tour was free. The tour was fantastic. The guide was a font of knowledge and his delivery was spot on. It was very interesting to learn about the history, diseases and the macabre practices before germ theory was a recognised ‘thing’ and the guide was hilarious in his descriptions. 

New Orleans was a really nasty place in the 1800s, being in a swamp full of mosquitoes with no viable sewage system and hot summers. In fact, yellow fever claimed the lives of nearly 8,000 residents in 1853.There were only 154,000 residents, so this works out as 5% dead!

Music and arts tour

We started our tour opposite the Louis Armstrong Park and as we walked through we got a brief recap on the Voodoo history in NOLA, then moved onto the statue of the main man, Satchmo, or Louis Armstrong.  He grew up in New Orleans and in his early years was in and out of institutions having committed petty crime. On the streets of Storyville - a district of the city, and in the institutions, Satchmo learned his trade, playing the trumpet, and when he was older, joining a jazz band and singing too.

Satchmo

We walked into the French Quarter and our guide told us about the best bars and live music venues in the city, all the while playing jazz through his ipad. We were told about the music and live burlesque offered in the evening at the House of Blues, which also hosts a Gospel brunch on Sundays. Another one that piqued our interest was SoBou Legs and Eggs Burlesque Brunch also on Sundays.

We walked down near Jackson Square where our guide told us about Clementine Hunter, a folk artist from Louisiana and the first African-American artist to have a solo exhibition at what is now the New Orleans Museum of Art. Clementine was born in the 1886 and died in 1988. She only began to paint in her fifties and her subject area focused on life on the plantation including picking cotton, funerals and washing clothes and she was known for painting on all sorts of everyday items such as bottles, boxes and jugs. Although her early works were sold for 25c, her later work was going for thousands of dollars and in 1986, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by the Northwestern State University of Louisiana.

Walking through Pirates Alley we learned about the famous Sazerac cocktail. This is actually the official cocktail of the city, and is a combination of cognac, absinthe, Peychaud's Bitters, and sugar, or a variation of this. 

We stopped briefly outside the Presbytère, part of the Louisiana State Museum, which is next door to the St Louis cathedral, and home to a hurricane exhibit, focusing on the devastation caused by Katrina in 2005, and a permanent Mardi Gras exhibition. More on this later.

We carried on through the French Quarter to Frenchmen street, where serious music lovers go, leaving the hen parties to Bourbon Street carnage, and where we ended the tour. We decided to stop at The Maison where the fantastic Swingin’ Gypsies were playing, whose music is a synergy of gypsy jazz, traditional jazz and swing.

Swingin' Gypsies - Frenchmen Street

After the food tour and the music and arts tour the guides followed up with huge emailed lists of events, restaurants, gigs, bars and museums which was well beyond the call of duty. I’m not going to replicate them here because this blog would take about 5 years to read, and you should do the tour yourself to get the info.

That night we went for a great Vietnamese at 9 Roses Café – more importantly, it was cheap! 

Cemetery tour

The final tour was the tour of New Orleans’ oldest existing cemetery, the St Louis Cemetery which was founded in 1789. The tour included a stop at Marie Laveau’s tomb, which is said to be the second most visited tomb in the whole of the US, although I’m not sure how true that is. (Michael Jackson? JFK? Marilyn Monroe? Elvis??)

We have been inside the cemetery before on our last visit to the city, but we didn’t have a tour guide that time. Now, it is only accessible through a licensed tour guide. 

Marie Laveau's tomb

Marie Laveau’s tomb is covered in X marks which is down to the legend that to get her to grant them a wish they would have to draw an X on the tomb, turn around three times, knock on the tomb, shout their wish and then if it was granted, they would have to come back, circle their X, and leave the Voodoo Queen an offering.  The X is based on the belief that Marie Laveau was illiterate. In 2013 Laveau’s tomb was painted with pink latex paint by vandals. This was later removed by pressure washing which destroyed a lot of the old plaster. People still leave offerings at Laveau’s grave, like candles, pennies, hairbands as she was a hairdresser, and other items.

Another notable tomb in the cemetery currently lies empty and is in contrast to all of the other structures there. It is a 9ft tall white pyramid which sticks out like a sore thumb and is owned by eccentric actor Nicolas Cage.

Nicolas Cage's tomb

In the 1800s when large numbers of poor immigrants settled in the US, benevolent societies were set up to help them find a place to live and somewhere to work. The benevolent societies also helped fund burials. One such society was the Italian Benevolent Society, which owns an extravagant tomb in the cemetery made of marble and cast iron, where many poor Italian immigrants were laid to rest. This tomb was made famous by the film Easy Rider which was filmed there without permission, after which the archdiocese banned all filming in the cemetery.

That afternoon we went to Antoine’s, the $20.18 lunch special restaurant, with a friend we met on the music and arts tour and had the lunch special and cocktails. There were three options for each course. My choices were charbroiled oysters with garlic and herb butter and topped with cheese to start, filet steak and mashed potatoes with a burgundy sauce for main, and dessert was pecan bread pudding. The 25c strawberry lemonades with vodka washed it all down nicely. This is definitely recommended to anyone visiting the city. 

After lunch and slightly worse for wear thanks to 25c cocktails at Antoine's, we went to the Presbytère to see the hurricane exhibition and the Mardi Gras museum. When you walk in, the first thing you see is Fats Domino’s Steinway piano, which was a casualty of Katrina having sat submerged for weeks in his home after the hurricane. It is now a symbol of the disaster and its restoration signifies the city’s resilience and musical heritage. 

Fats Domino's piano

The exhibition gave a comprehensive overview of the destruction caused by Katrina, including first hand stories such as a diary kept by a man who was stuck in his attic for weeks who wrote on his wall, TV footage, photographs and belongings salvaged in the aftermath. It describes the rescue, rebuild and renewal of the city after the hurricane which flooded 80% of New Orleans. 

Mardi Gras exhibition

The Mardi Gras museum on the second floor showcases the history of the festival, and features costumes, parade floats and other memorabilia. The toilets are even made to look like festival toilets.

Mardi Gras exhibition

It was the first day of Mardi Gras and there were masks for sale everywhere, so of course we needed to buy a couple. 

Masks

We found some for a fair price in the French Market, grabbed a great pizza at the nearby Louisiana Pizza Kitchen and then headed back into the heart of the French Quarter for more drinks before the parade started. The first day of Mardi Gras is sometimes known as the Twelfth Night and the second oldest krewe in New Orleans, the Twelfth Night Revelers organises a masquerade ball and parade. Other krewes put on parades and we saw the parade organised by the Krewe de Jeanne D’Arc, which displayed the story of Joan of Arc and gave out ‘throws’ which are small favours or treats such as wooden coins, gob stoppers and beads.

Joan of Arc parade

As well as being the first day of Mardi Gras, it was the city’s tricentennial, or New Orleans’ 300^th birthday. Founded by the French in 1718, the city was then destroyed in 1722 by a hurricane and the streets were rebuilt in the typical-US grid style. The city in those days really only consisted of the French Quarter and it wasn’t the nicest place to be. Due to the climate and the swampy land, it was rife with disease. New Orleans remained French until 1763 when it was handed over to the Spanish, before returning to the French in 1803. It was the wealthiest city in the US for a while in the 19^th century especially being such an important port from the Mississippi. In the 20^th century the city introduced jazz to the world.

Oz nightclub

To celebrate, there was an impressive fireworks display over the banks of the Mississippi, and we got chatting to a New Orleans local who we ended up partying all night with in a gay club called Oz where we spent much of the evening in our new Mardi Gras masks.

Oz nightclub

We were flying back to Boston the next day to get a connecting flight back to London. We checked out as late as we could (still drunk) and headed to a pub we had found on our last trip called Checkpoint Charlie which was also a launderette – inspired, drink while you’re waiting for your washing.

Checkpoint Charlie is a rock n roll 'dive' bar...in a good way. It seemed to be more of a locals hang out, but they were all real lively characters and super friendly. We hung out in the bar for a few hours, getting drunk again, being fed King cake and having our faces painted with glitter. I ran over to the French market to get a replacement mask after we smashed ours the night before, and I popped into Belles Diner to grab some food where I ended up having awesome cocktails with the staff; pecan pie whiskey with vanilla ice cream and caramel. Pretty decent end to our trip.

Belle's Diner

Along with the tours we did, there are several other tours in New Orleans, including ghost tours, cocktail tours and vampire tours. We did a ghost tour on our last visit to the city so we gave it a miss this time, but I would definitely recommend it – New Orleans has many a scary tale to tell. 

Another great thing to do is the swamp tour. You’re taken out in a boat for a couple of hours through the Louisiana bayous to spot alligators and other wildlife. One boat ride we haven’t done is the Steamboat Natchez Harbor Cruise which is a narrated cruise up the Mississippi, with music playing on the way back.

New Orleans has an insane number of festivals and there is something going on every day. Last time we were there we stumbled across the Crescent City Blues & BBQ festival in Lafayette Square which is a free festival selling great barbecue food and which has 2 stages for live music. Top of the list for us for our next visit will be to see a Saints game.

 

This is how everyone should finish almost 14 months of travelling the world. New Orleans, always a pleasure. Apart from the inevitable hangovers.

We are going home. I could cry. I probably will. 

#neworleans #creole #cajun #antoinesneworleans #poboys #muffuletta #jambolaya #gumbo #marielaveau #voodoo #mardigras #bellesdiner #checkpointcharlie #cafedumonde #frenchmarket #antoinesneworleans #ozneworleans #freetoursbyfoot

New Orleans Part 1

New Orleans Louisiana (NOLA) aka Big Easy, Crescent City

Hello old friend! We didn’t expect to be back quite so soon but there we were. We had been to New Orleans when we got married and had an exhaustingly crazy time and we had always said we would go back one day. It wasn’t on our itinerary for this trip because of the cost but we needed to warm up and this was the cheapest place to fly to from Boston.

Music everywhere

The usual place to stay for tourists is the French Quarter, but we were on a tight budget, and prices were quite high in New Orleans because it was the tail-end of holiday season, plus Mardi Gras was kicking off. We found a cool place out in Mid-City called Hosteeva Express, around 5km from the French Quarter, and the infamous party road, Bourbon Street which is 13 blocks of bars, hotels, restaurants and tourist shops. 

It was really easy to get down to the main part of New Orleans though; the city is well-known for its trams or streetcars, and we used them all the time, especially as they ran frequently up and down our road - Canal Street - directly to and from the French Quarter. The tram cost $1.25 a ride, or $3 for 24 hours.

Street car

After we had checked in, we headed straight down to Bourbon Street for a bite to eat and a cocktail. It was so great to be back, we had such fun there before. Bourbon Street is for the tourists – locals tend not to go out there as much. We were tourists though, so we were allowed to spend a bit of time there!

We grabbed some food in a pub called Pat O’Briens and soon got our first set of beads, which are synonymous with Mardi Gras festivities. Mardi Gras is a huge festival that runs for weeks, starting after Christmas, on 6^th January which is the Epiphany or ‘Three Kings day’ and runs until Shrove Tuesday (which is also pancake day), just before Lent. This means that the festival can vary in length depending on when Lent falls. Mardi Gras means ‘Fat Tuesday’ when all the fatty food is consumed before fasting during Lent – hence the reason we have pancakes, to use up the butter, milk and eggs.

Mardi Gras is famed for its amazing parades, organised by clubs known as krewes, and there are normally several large parades each day but the biggest parades are during the last week of the season. There are also other events such as masquerade balls, hence the plethora of masks for sale all over the city.

Decorated house in French Quarter

There is a growing number of super-krewes in New Orleans such as The Krewe of Bacchus, formed in 1968 and has over 1,000 members and 31 super-floats. Bacchus’ floats are famous for their extravagant decoration and entertainment and include the Bacchagator and Bacchasaurus.

In response to these super-krewes, there is an increasing amount of micro-krewes, like the Krewe of Barkus, founded in 1992 which uses dogs as the focal point of their parades.

As we’d been to New Orleans before and we had a few days here for this trip, we decided to go and see the new Star Wars film the next day, where we got the chance to try buttered popcorn. SERIOUSLY AMERICA, WTF ARE YOU THINKING?! Let me tell you, this is not something you want to try. It is popcorn with melted butter poured all over it, disgusting. The film was good though.

Jackson Square

Later that evening we were back down Bourbon Street to sample some of the cocktails and we wound up in a bar where there was some great live music. New Orleans was a lot colder than normal, and seemed fairly quiet, probably because holiday season was coming to an end. Many of the bars had live bands playing but were mostly empty, but this particular bar seemed much livelier. We got chatting to some Aussies who we spent the next couple of days hanging out with and having a few beers with.

Bourbon Street bar

When we got back to the hotel, we booked up our usual free walking tours of which there are many in New Orleans. We used the same company for all of our New Orleans tours and we can highly recommend Free Tours by Foot. As well as having experienced, highly knowledgeable tour guides and having a comprehensive range of tours, they even have detailed self-guided tours, and you pay what you think the tour is worth in tips at the end, so they go out of their way to make the tour a fantastic experience. We ended up doing five tours with them, and the first one we went on was the Voodoo tour.

Shadow statue of Jesus

Voodoo tour 
We were met opposite the Louis Armstrong Park the next morning by our guide, who, although not a Voodoo practitioner (she was a Wiccan), does have a lot of friends who practise Voodoo, and she knew her stuff. We walked into the park towards Congo Square where our guide told us about the origins of Voodoo in New Orleans.

Voodoo arrived in New Orleans in the 1700s when the slave trade began in earnest and the city was governed by the French. Although the slaves - who came from all over Africa - had their own religion, ideas and beliefs known as Vodun, they were forced by the French colonists into becoming Roman Catholics. As Roman Catholics, no one worked on Sundays and this included the slaves. However, it was illegal for groups of more than 3 slaves to congregate in the city, so every Sunday they would meet at Congo Square, which at the time was just outside the city limits on the other side of Rampart Street and which is now in part of Louis Armstrong Park. 

Statue in Congo Square

The slaves would meet in the Square to sing and dance, but this activity masked the rituals of the religion that they were purported to have left behind. This religion wasn’t quite the same for all of them though; it differed slightly depending on where they came from, so the result was a blend of different strains of Voodoo mixed with Catholicism, which itself had some similarities to Voodoo. Both religions believe in one God, and both pray to other religious representations, such as Saints in Catholicism and Loa (or Lwa) in Voodoo. Saints and Loa would have been humans who lived devout lives and those practising their faith would pray to them for particular reasons. St Joseph and Ogou Balanjo are meant to help small children, St Peter and Papa Legba both hold the keys to the spirit world. 

Voodoo offerings to the Loa include bottles of rum, cigars, pennies and coffee. Voodoo rituals are opportunities for the living to speak to the Loa who will ‘ride’ an individual, similar to being possessed. Rituals are also for healing, initiations into the religion, casting spells and creating potions.

Voodoo offerings

We strolled into the French Quarter, stopping at the site of the home of Marie Laveau, the most famous Voodoo priestess, known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Marie was a shrewd character who set herself up as a hairdresser which allowed her to get the dirt on all the locals through the women gossiping as they had their hair done. This put Marie in a position of power in the city. As well as being a hairdresser she was, more importantly, a Voodoo practitioner and made and sold potions to the locals as well as hosting ceremonies, helping the sick and saving condemned men from hangings. She is famed for legitimising Voodoo in New Orleans, perhaps using her knowledge over the powerful people in New Orleans as leverage to get their support. 

As we carried on walking, we learned about ‘gris-gris’ bags. These little bags are talismans, or charms which are normally carried around to give the bearer luck, bring them money, or for some other personal reason. The gris-gris bag should contain something of the bearer’s like hair, or clothing, then usually herbs are added, along with other things like coins, stones or crystals.

We moved onto Voodoo Authentica, a shop in the centre of the French Quarter where we had the chance to go in and browse the voodoo dolls, candles, charms and amulets and buy potions if we felt so inclined. We learned that Voodoo dolls are not to cause harm to those that might have done us wrong; their purpose is the opposite. The doll represents someone we want to help and sticking the pin in a certain part of the doll is supposed to heal the affliction of that person.  

French Quarter tour

That afternoon we met up with our new Aussie friends for the French Quarter tour. We met at the Andrew Jackson statue in Jackson Square, in front of the St Louis Cathedral. The cathedral was rebuilt in 1789 after a huge fire in 1788 that destroyed more than 800 buildings in the city. 

St Louis Cathedral

From there we headed to Pirates Alley. There is a bit of folklore surrounding this area, which runs between St Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo, or the Old Spanish Governor’s Mansion. It was said to be the meeting place for pirates but bearing in mind its location it seemed a strange place for them to hang out. It is also said that slaves were sold at the nearby St Anthony’s Garden.

The small bar in the alley, Pirates Alley Café, is well known for serving Absinthe, which is where we ended up one night after the Mardi Gras parade with some new New Orleans friends.

A famous face in New Orleans who lived in Pirates Alley was the writer William Faulkner who actually penned his first novel while living there. 

Our guide told us about how he was once invited to a glitzy New Orleans dinner at the last minute but he had to decline because he didn’t have a tuxedo. Not to worry, cried his fellow diner, if you have a pirate’s costume, you’re in! Happily he did have a pirate’s outfit and made it to the dinner, and we saw the pics to prove it. That story is sooo New Orleans. Of course he had a pirate’s outfit, and if he didn’t you can bet he knew someone that did.

Royal Street

We strolled up to Royal Street, which is an exclusive street lined with art galleries and shops such as James H Cohen and Sons - Rare Antiques and Collectibles, renowned for its eclectic range of treasures, including guns from the civil war, swords, and antique maps. Royal Street is also where a lot of street musicians congregate as the street is pedestrianised during the day, and it is where the iconic statue of Jesus with upstretched arms can be found.

Next, we strolled past the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum on Chartres Street. Louis J. Dufilho, Jr. was the first pharmacist to become licensed after the State of Louisiana introduced a law in 1804 requiring all practising pharmacists to pass a licensing exam. Dufilho operated out of the pharmacy which is now a museum. Our tour guide told us that the museum offered a tour which would last around an hour, at 1pm on Tuesdays to Thursdays.

Typical architecture in the French Quarter

Next on our tour of the French Quarter was Preservation Hall which was opened in 1961 to meet the demands of people wanting to listen to rock and roll and jazz and it is open every night for shows at 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10pm. Although we didn’t make it in, we were told that Preservation Hall is tiny inside and it doesn’t serve alcohol, but you can bring your own.

Back down Bourbon Street again, showing those Aussies how it’s done. 

We’d previously been to a bar called Tropical Isle which sells the lethal Hand Grenade cocktail, a super-sweet iced cocktail served in a huge green hand grenade shaped plastic cup.

More music

 
On our last visit we had noticed another cocktail being sold there, called the Shark Attack. When someone ordered one, the barman would frantically ring a bell, blow a whistle and pour some spirits into a glass. He would then put a frenzied plastic shark into the glass and the drink would turn red, like blood. We found it funny…but I guess you had to be there. 

We ended up dancing the night away in a bar with a live band which took requests for a dollar a go. When the singer/pianist wanted $20 to play ‘Don’t stop believing’ the whole bar emptied. Know your limits mate, you’re not Elton John.

To be continued...

 #nola #neworleans #frenchquarter #voodoo #sharkattack #bourbonstreet #freetoursbyfoot