NEW ORLEANS, La. – We pretended we were the regular type of travelers in NOLA. We sang off-key songs about the city and (mostly) kept to the touristy areas.
Our gorgeous plantation-room suite with two (!) chandeliers was across the street from Emeril’s Delmonico restaurant. We didn’t eat there – we caught the city bus at the stop in front of it, which took us to a trolley that dropped us near Bourbon St., where we walked along with a ginormous beer and the best bloody Mary I’ve ever tasted (it had four pickled green beans in it).
We had coffee and beignets at Café du Monde, and jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gator for supper. We toured a voodoo museum and walked along the Mississippi awhile.
St. Louis cemetery, of course. It’s like walking through a low village where all the tiny houses have been boarded up and abandoned. Quiet narrow walkways. Plastic flowers and Mardi Gras beads and XXX painted and charcoaled on the walls of the mausoleums. Offerings left at the graves of voodoo queens: liquor, coins, a tiny plastic baby.
And as always in the South, a storm. But it wore itself off after lunch and the drive to Texas – Texas! – was clear and blue and as stunning as I’d hoped.
Life's a Trip 
Ah yes. New Orleans. It’s not like any other city; it is in fact like being on a different planet. It is one of the best places, for many reasons, including (as you point out) its cemeteries. And I have never eaten better anywhere (France, Italy, New York, Montreal…) than in New Orleans. In NOLA, people know how to live.
LikeLike