New Orleans 2017

Well, we had never been to New Orleans.  What a culture shock.. We are here to celebrate Kristina's 30th birthday..  Karen, Casey and Jan along with Chris and Kristina are staying at David and Alma's timeshare at the WorldMark, Wyndam Hotel in the Garden District. We are at Pontchartrain Landing RV Park about eight miles away. Not the easiest to meet up. We took the park shuttle and then trolley's over to their condo and it took two hours, eight miles ! !   We did walk part of it since it was three trolly's, blue, red then green.  The good news is that the shuttle from the park to the French Quarter is only $6 per person (wish it ran more often tho), round trip and the trolley is $.40 per person for us oldies, but goodies ! ! !   LOL.  Even tho I think we should have paid at least one more time on the trolley, the drivers didn't charge us.  The people are so nice here.  Later, Kristina helped me put the Uber app on my phone and we used it. So convenient and not very expensive.

Breakfast at the dive bar next to Karen's condo!  Great bloody Mary's !

We had lunch on this patio of a restaurant called the Bulldog.  Fun place..

 The whiskey bar !

Cafe Du Monde - the beignets are wonderful...  much like a powdered sugar covered donuts...  Yummy ! !  Always served warm.

On Halloween we went to St Louis Cemetery #2.  So very interesting.  However, walking there was also very interesting.  Love all the iron work on the fences and the houses are all so different with great porches.

Look at the corn design... wonder what it means??

These are family tombs. It was very surprising to learn that bodies are put in and by the end of summer they are "dust" as the internal tomb temperature reaches 400 degrees. The family then adds the name and info to the "tablets" on the front and/or sides of the tomb and can add another body. There were some that had fresh flowers and a couple had people there actually doing work on upkeep. The most recent death we noticed was 2013. Very interesting.

This tomb is used to show what they look like inside. It was bought by a family and then they all moved away...

Kristina's 30th birthday was our day for our swamp air boat ride ! ! The company we rode with owns hundreds of acres of swamp land.

 Love the Spanish moss...

These are dry docked oil working ships

The air boat goes right over this water hyacinth. It just floats. Our guide says that it is really an invasive species. They hate it.  Came from Asia. Has a beautiful purple flower but couldn't get a pic..

Our guide tells us that they actually "condition" a few alligators to the boats coming by, otherwise, as we did see, they will immediately take off when they hear the boats coming. This guy barely moved. Our guide treated him to marshmallows. He also kept taping him on the face with a pole. The alligator didn't seem to care. Also, we had a really cold, windy day last weekend. That made a major change in the gators. It signaled a seasonal change where they start their hibernation. They actually bury themselves in the mud. They can really slow their heart beats and save oxygen. 

 This guy is about 60 years old ! ! 

 Lots of heron's and egrets.

This baby came out of a box on the boat!!  LOL  - -  wrong time of year to find them in the wild. They actually harvest the eggs and sell them to farms and then get a percentage of the babies back to release into the wild. This business owns 650 acres of swamp land. Our guide said that Louisiana is the only state where water can be owned privately.

Didn't think a cruise ship could come this far up the Mississippi River....




Only one more full day here in New Orleans. Sure is a big city with very narrow streets ! !  Very interesting, but very big city. 

Lunch at BB Kings along with great music ! ! 

Now heading west. Need to be in Las Vegas by December 2nd.