Around Louisiana- Saturday, July 09, 2011

If you’re in Nova Scotia, you should go on a whale watching tour, but if you’re in Louisiana, you should definitely go on an alligator watching tour. We were shown around the bayous of the Manchac Swamp by Captain Tom Billiot of the Cajun Pride tour company. It was an amazing trip, made even better by Captain Tom’s personal stories. He is a native French speaker who has lived in the Louisiana swamps all of his life. His Cajun accent is endearing and his personal stories seem endless. He says he has guided more than 10,000 tours and could do a two hour tour on any subject in the swamps, including leeches. We have no doubt that he could.

We started seeing alligators before the tour even began. Two were swimming near the banks where we were about the board the boats. Capt. Tom seems to know many of them personally, and told us how the one nearest to us had lost sight in his left eye after territorial fights with other gators this spring. On other days, that one has come up on the banks by the ticket office, and Capt. Tom has had to get it back into the water before tourists mistook it for one of the big plastic ones. We were also amazed by the huge black grasshoppers that seemed to be everywhere.

After the boat was launched, we made our way through the bayou. Capt. Tom would periodically throw marshmallows out to the alligators and some of the other animals as well. We saw at least two families of raccoons along the shore, and Capt. Tom threw marshmallows to them too. Twice he stopped the boat and got young alligators to come up after bits of chicken that he held out on a stick. We saw a family of herons, who had chicks that had recently hatched. There were dragonflies and Spanish moss, and everything you’d want in a swamp tour. Towards the end of the tour, Capt. Tom opened the crates that had been next to Julie the entire time. From the first one, he pulled a small baby alligator. Since his mouth was taped shut, the baby gator was passed around and all three girls got a chance to hold him. Then, Captain Tom took out a good sized alligator snapping turtle. She was too dangerous to pass around, but he did bring her around for everyone to see. She had her mouth wide open the entire time and you could see the little “worm” that the snapper uses to entice little fish in. We all agreed it was a fantastic tour, and the best morning we’ve had on the trip so far. Anna bought an alligator tooth and Dad bought some alligator meat in the form of a Slim Jim-like stick.

After lunch, we went to the other side of New Orleans to the Chalmette National Battlefield Park. This park is the location of the famous Battle of New Orleans, won by Andrew Jackson at the end of the War of 1812. The Bobby Horton song exaggerates the situation a little bit. The British were not cowards and did not “run through the briars where a rabbit couldn’t go” to get away. However, it was an enormously lopsided battle. The British had around 2,000 casualties at the end of the fighting, while the Americans had lost only 20. It is the battle that made Jackson a hero and that would give Americans the idea that they had won the war.

Of course we started at the visitor’s center, and this one is brand new. It still has the new visitor’s center smell. It officially opened this year on January 8th, the anniversary of the battle. The old one was destroyed by Katrina. (In fact there were many parts of the neighborhoods we drove through today that have not recovered and houses are standing empty.) We watched the short programs and electric map, and looked in the circle of exhibits. Then Scott (and sometimes Julie) went out on the battlefield. Anna and Emma had probably had enough of battlefields over the last few days, and it was also very hot- in the 90s- so they chose to stay in the air conditioned car and play with their DS games.

In fact, there’s not a lot to the battlefield. War of 1812 battles are on a much smaller scale than Civil War battles. You can see the American line behind the works that were thrown up by Jackson’s men. In front of that is a wide open field, which the British tried to cross. The Mississippi River is not visible from the battlefield level anymore, but the nearby Chalmette oil refinery is. There is a plantation-style home that has a romantic looking façade, but it’s quite small, with only three rooms per floor, and it is a post-war addition to the battle field. Besides the cannon along the American lines, the most iconic thing on this battlefield is the 100 foot obelisk-shaped monument. Scott made Emma and Anna get out of the car when he took pictures there.

It’s “Louisiana Saturday Night,” but we were done and went back to the hotel where the girls swam again in the bath-temperature pool.

New Orleans- Julie's Birthday, July 8, 2011

To kick off Julie’s birthday, we got up early and made our way down to the French Quarter. We started with a Grey Line bus tour because we wanted to get an overview of where things are in the city and hear some of the history behind it. We got to the lighthouse that serves as the ticket office with time to spare before the tour so we walked up the river through a park while we waited.

The bus tour began in the French Quarter. The driver pointed out interesting statuary as well as the home of Brad and Angelina. We noted several spots in “The Quarter” to visit later in the day. We continued out some beautiful tree lined avenues. On some of them the “live oaks” formed an archway across the road. The bus took us through some of the more interesting and exclusive neighborhoods and we got to see some beautiful homes. We stopped for 10 minutes at St. Louis Cemetery Number 3, one of the cemeteries for above ground internment in the city. Julie and Anna took the opportunity to stroll through the tombs. Emma had been lulled to sleep by the bus. She woke up just before we left the cemetery, but she didn’t really want to go into it anyway. As we were passing the trolley cars in the “neutral space” on St. Charles Avenue, we saw many beads dangling from the trees and power lines—leftovers from the Mardi Gras parade each year.

Even though Hurricane Katrina was in 2005, it’s still possible to see evidence of it. The bus driver seemed to be taking us through the areas that had recovered pretty well, but he would occasionally mention that if we were at that spot then, we’d be under 6, 9, 12, and even 15 feet of water, depending on where we were at the moment. We did see some empty houses out near Lake Pontchartrain, and could see where the water line had been on a few of them. When we were on our cruise later, we saw piers that had taken out by an explosion and fire that came from the lightening of Katrina.

New Orleans seems to be an unreasonably expensive place to live. The houses require pylons under them that are 80 feet deep. Even then, the concrete slabs that they are built on will sink and the house will need shoring up every 10-20 years. Even the front lawns sink and need new top soil to be added every few years. Julie decided that between the cost and the heat and the bugs, New Orleans was a nice place to visit, but she wouldn’t want to live here.

We then boarded the steamer Natchez, for a two-hour tour on what is billed as “the last steamship on the Mississippi River.” It is a sternwheeler, pushed by a huge red paddle wheel. It has three decks. The first deck has the engine room, where you can view the steam engines that drive the wheel. The second deck is where food is served. We had our lunch here, but we shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that what we thought might be chicken ended up being fish. Emma ate a lot of hers. The rest of us didn’t.

There was a jazz piano player inside, but we spent most of our time outside, watching the scenery pass and listening to the narration. The narrator made interesting observations about the tankers, freighters, and other ships that we were passing as well as the things that could be seen on shore. The Natchez went down the Mississippi River about 8 miles. We went by the Chalmette Battlefield, where Andrew Jackson fought the battle that is better known as the Battle of New Orleans. We saw ships being unloaded where Domino Sugar is refined. When we reached the Chalmette Oil Refinery, the Natchez turned around and headed back up river. We then steamed upstream, past downtown New Orleans to the large Crescent City Connection bridges and then back again to the dock where we started. All of us enjoyed this part of the day a lot, though we’d opt not to get lunch if we had to do it again.

After the ride on the boat, we explored the French Quarter on our own. We started in the Jackson Brewery. It hasn’t brewed a beer in years, but was originally the home of “Jax” beer (short for “Jackson”, though we weren’t familiar with this brand). We discovered that it was a place that had some nice tourist oriented shops, a food court, and most importantly, some public restrooms. One of the shop owners was a nice South Korean man who asked Emma where she was from. He ended up giving her some souvenir Mardi Gras beads, and in turn gave some to the rest of us too. We wore them around the rest of the day. We continued through the French Quarter to the Café du Monde, where Julie got to sample the famous beignets she had been looking forward to trying. It turns out the little square “French doughnuts” basically taste like fried dough from the fair and have a heap of powdered sugar on them that falls all over you when you bite into them. Following Decatur Street, we went into several shops. Many of them felt like Spencer’s Gifts, but with a voodoo-cajun-tourist trap spin. Eventually, we came to the French Market. It’s a tourist market, with any kind of New Orleans paraphernalia you’d want. A thunderstorm hit about this time, but it passed quickly, and we were basically under cover for it.

We made our way past and through more shops to Jackson Square. Scott was excited about getting his picture taken there because it’s the iconic view of New Orleans. The equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in the middle of the square is there because of his victory in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. However, during the Civil War, Benjamin Butler, the Union general in charge of the occupation of New Orleans, had Jackson’s own words carved into the base of the statue—“The Union- It must and shall be preserved.” Scott has always loved that little nose thumbing at the Confederates. We went into Saint Louis Cathedral, on the square, and enjoyed the peace and air conditioning for a quiet moment. We also got a picture in front of the Cabildo, which was the seat of the colonial government in Louisiana. It was the building where the ceremonies for finalizing the Louisiana Purchase took place in 1803. Anna learned about that in Social Studies this year. We made our way to the many bars on Bourbon Street. Since it was Friday, it looked like the places were just starting to kick into gear. We took a quick look around as we walked down the street towards where our car was parked, but didn’t stop for a drink anywhere.

Anna declared that the French Quarter is “creepy.” From the very beginning of the day, before the crowds arrived, we noted that there was a lot of garbage and bottles around. We wondered what it must be like the day after Mardi Gras. There are all kinds of people in this area, including many weird ones. The girls were particularly creeped out by one street performer who called Emma over, and tried to get us to take a picture with him. None of us liked him, so we feigned not having a camera. We looked like tourists, so he didn’t seem to believe us. “Use your phone,” he said, but we left as quickly as we could. We also all agree that it’s also a city of strange smells. You’ll smell something very strange, and before you can say “What’s that?” the smell is gone and something else has taken its place.

Our bus driver said that when people hear that you went to New Orleans, they’ll ask you where you ate. He said you won’t want to tell them Subway or McDonald’s, so you should treat yourself to a real dinner at an expensive place or you should make something up. So for Julie’s birthday dinner in New Orleans we went to Prudhomme’s. Denny Prudhomme’s.

When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that the space shuttle Atlantis took off today. It was the end of an era, and the last time the space shuttles will ever be used. We had been watching the date, because if the weather caused a postponement of even a few days, it could have gone up when we were in Florida. It went up on time though, and it seems that around one million people were somewhere near by to watch it go. According to the paper that’s about the same number of people that were there to watch the Apollo XI moonshot lift off. The shuttle will now be in orbit for a scheduled 13 days, so by the time it returns to Kennedy Space Center for the landing, we will already have left Florida. Oh well