On the Thursday before spring break started, we flew down to New Orleans, LA. We hung out there for a couple days and then took a cruise out Saturday evening. The pictures that follow are just a few of the many we took. It's going to take me awhile to post them all, so there will be more posts to come!
Just a picture of some of the buildings in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
Cops working hard on the job.
In New Orleans, the cemeteries are on both sides of the street. It is normal to walk your dog in the cemetery or even just drive through the cemetery to get where you're going. In the cemetery we stopped in, there was a neighborhood just on the other side. You had to drive through the cemetery to get to those houses. It was interesting.
Do you see the brown marks on this pole? That's where the water level was when Katrina flooded the town. There is a faint one right below the bus window. Crazy!
If you can make out the levees on the right side, this is where they broke when Hurricane Katrina came through. This whole area and the neighborhood behind it was under water. A barge came through when the levees broke, and wiped out all the houses. That would be scary!
The blue poles show how the water level rose during Katrina.
During the next few pictures you will see houses that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie helped fund and build for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
This house is the first "boat house". If you can make out the bottom, it is shaped like the bottom of a boat is. When a hurricane comes through here again (this was the area that was completely flooded), this house will float away with everything else. Let's just hope the poor man who's standing there on his porch, doesn't float out into the middle of the ocean.
Gutters that go down to the ground. I forget what the purpose of that is.
This house has an escape hatch on the top. Good idea considering if your house gets flooded, you can't get out your front door.
Close up of the escape hatch
This is not a Brad/Angelina rebulit home. It is just a really nice looking house in New Orleans. As they say down there, everybody lives together. The rich live with the poor and the poor live with the rich. I don't think I got any pictures, but right next to these really nice houses were really dumpy houses. It was interesting.
A Mom and Pop shop. Big chain stores, like Walmart and Kroger, won't build down there because of the insurance issue, with being so close to the coast.
A "shotgun" house. You can open the front door, open the back door, and shoot a gun all the way through the house.
We stopped at a cemetery on one of our tours. They do things a little differently down there. When you die, they do very little embalming. After the funeral, they bury you in these tombs. They don't bury underground because of the flooding. No sooner than a year and a day after they put you in these tombs, do they pull you out. By that time, all your skin has deteriorated. Then they take a mallet and crush your bones until they are dust. They take that dust and put it in a cloth bag. From there, they take a 10-foot pole (which is where the saying, I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole comes from), and shove the bag to the back of the tomb. That way, they can get more bodies in the tomb. Some tombs can have up to 100 bodies in them.
Cemetery
The vent so the body can deteriorate rather quickly. Surprisingly, it doesn't smell really bad in the cemetery.
I believe this was the nuns' tomb. Like I said, they can fit 100 bodies in some of the tombs. You can also see that more than one person can die at a time. There is more than one slot for a casket. Those are also names on the side of the tomb.
This tomb was someone famous. I thought it was a famous chef but I can't remember.
Superdome for the Saints
Beads on the cable lines from Mardi Gras. They don't take them down.
Beads on the tree from Mardi Gras
Cable car that we didn't get a chance to ride on while we were there.
No comments:
Post a Comment