Stroll in City Park
After the sculpture garden, I went to a cute little french cafe in the middle of the park, which had jazz band buskers out the front. I had more amazing creole food - beignets (a sweet french puff pastry type thing) and crawfish etoufee, a sort of stew. I was in heaven.
Crawfish Etoufee and Beignets
Later that night, after a much required nap, I went back down to the French Quarter for a ghost tour! All of the history (even the scary stuff) in NOLA is unbelievable! This was an amazing tour - definitely recommend!
The tour was a walking tour around much of the quarter. A surprising thing about the Quarter is that it burnt down twice during a time when the Spanish occupied NOLA, leaving only 3 original French Buildings standings. The buildings that I had been admiring weren't in fact actually French! The buildings also have some gruesome history. On the posts of some galleries (sort of like balconies), they had what were called Romeo hooks. As they described it, these hooks deterred theives from climbing up the posts because, on the way down, they would go from "Romeos" to "Juliets".
Our guide, Tiger (yes, that's apparently her name) told us the history of the indigenous cannabalistic tribes, and the NOLA traditional burial process. Beccause the city is built on a swamp they are unable to bury the dead! Instead, the cemeteries are full of above ground tombs, which, during the summer, basically turn into natural incineraters. Each family has their own tomb, and when someone dies, they open it up, sweep the previous remains to the side and put them in. By law, the body needs to remain in the tomb for one year and one day to guarantee that they have stayed in for a full summer. She didn't go into detail about what would happen if the next family member died before that one year and one day was up...
We walked down streets that used to "store" the bodies that had died during the summer from various diseases, including cholera and yellow fever. Funnily enough, they were stored in the rich neighbourhoods. During the summer, because of the rampant diseases, the rich people would leave to their second homes. The poorer people took advantage of the empty streets while they were away. Apparently, the cops still get called up by people reporting that they had smelled a dead body.
We also visited the first NOLA bar which used to be a pirate bar; a hotel which used to be an orphanage which burned down, where apparently little boys still run around the halls, tormenting guests; an old army hospital, with some super gruesome amputation stories; and the best stop by far, the LaLaurie Mansion. This was the scariest stop! The third season of American Horror Story is actually based on this house! The owner of the home back in the early 20th century, Madame Dalphine, a rich socialite, who loved to through wild parties, also liked to torture and mutilate slaves as well. She would perform crude surgeries on them, break and reset their bones into horribly contorted shapes and perform all sorts of terrible experiments on them! I was shaking just standing outside. The guide also told us the funny story of how Nick Cage bought the house in the early 2000s, not knowing the full history. In the 3 years he owned it, he had 19 different house attendants to look after it. They all quit after only a short time because of the things that they experienced in the house!
LaLaurie Mansion!
After the tour, I was spent! My friend, Zoe, who I had met in Austin was staying in the same hostel, so we ended up down the road at a jazz bar called Chickie Wah Wah where we drank and had incredible pulled pork nachoes.
