New Orleans, Louisiana: Day 1

Wow! New Orleans is an amazing place. We can't wait to come back here.

Tom was really surprised by how much I liked the city and I guess I was too. I think I was a little brainwashed by the Hollywood depiction of NOLA. I thought there wasn't much more to New Orleans than Bourbon Street and spicy food.  Boy, was I wrong.

We stayed at the French Quarter RV Resort which is just on the outskirts of the French Quarter. We were close enough that we could have walked to the FQ if we didn't have the kids.

The first day we took a guided city tour so we could get our bearings and see as much as we could. Then we could decide what we wanted to go back and see more of.

We saw lots of historic buildings and monuments:

Lots of beautiful homes (this picture doesn't even scratch the surface of the beautiful homes and architecture in the city!):

We also visited the areas of the city that were flooded when the walls broke after Katrina. (It was interesting and heartbreaking to hear a local's version of what happended versus the media's interpretation.)

Many of the houses in the Lower 9th Ward still have the X's that were spraypainted on the front of the houses during the rescue and recovery searches after the floods. Don, our tour guide, explained that the top of the X had the date the house was searched, the left of the X were the initials of the team who did the search, on the right was the number of animals found and the bottom number was the number of bodies found. Needless to say, it was chilling to see those numbers still on many of the houses to this day.

I was amazed by how many homes are still boarded up while others (some right next door) are being lived in and others look completely refurbished. Don pointed out many empty lots that used to have old homes, businesses and even entire schools that were simply washed away in the flood.

We also stopped in a cemetary. Since New Orleans is below sea level, they have to bury people above ground. These cemetaries are built like little cities and some tombs hold several genrations of a family.

I especially liked the tombs with angels watching over top:

There was so much to see and do in New Orleans you quickly learn to 'laissez les bon temps rouler' (let the good times roll)!