So okay, I didn’t get much sleep the night before day 2 because I was creeped out by the story of torture and murder our haunted history guide told us before I went to bed. Took me a while to get my motor running in the morning, but eventually we picked up Katie (who was happily writing away in her hotel, BTW) and headed back through the French Quarter on our way to catch the St. Charles Avenue streetcar, running since the 1920s. Very cool way to travel from just outside the Quarter to the picturesque Garden District, where we spent a good chunk of the afternoon.

Here’s Katie with me on the street car, which still has the original wooden slatted seats. Yep, I’d be the pasty white Canadian wearing the black summer dress. It sure felt like summer to me. Wore sunscreen and everything, since I got burned a bit the day before. I think Katie got a kick out of that 🙂

We’d signed up for a guided walking tour ahead of time, and our first stop was Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. We’d been warned not to enter the cemeteries without a tour group, but in hindsight I don’t think it applied to this particular cemetery, as it seemed very safe and in a good neighborhood. Of course I was there in the middle of the day, so maybe it’s different at night.

As with the other cemeteries here in New Orleans, the crypts are above ground because the water table is so high. The remains of entire families can be laid to rest in a tomb. So long as a year and a day has passed between interments (a rule that’s existed since the yellow fever epidemics), the undertakers simply move aside old remains to make room for new ones. This practice became impossible during the horrific yellow fever epidemics that swept the city several times throughout the summer and fall until Walter Reed discovered the cause and cure for it during the construction of the Panama Canal. Damn pesky mosquitoes.

The house I want to move into. Can’t you just see me living here? I’d be happy as a clam sitting on the back porch swing with a pitcher of chilled sweet tea at my elbow and my laptop whirring away on my lap. I think my muse would like it down there. And I have to tell you, this whole area is something out of a magazine spread. Everything here smelled good, like flowers, and the gardens were unbelievable. Lush, green, manicured perfection. Various kinds of palm trees. Banana trees. Bubbling fountains. Fragrant roses. Crepe mertyles. Magnolias. Delicate hibiscus blooming right there in people’s yards in the middle of October, and a year-round gardening season. Another reason for me to scope out some real estate! It was quite something to see, that’s for sure.

After the tour we headed back to the Quarter and all the way through it to our respective hotels so we could freshen up for dinner. On the way to the restaurant Katie and my hubby patiently waited for this little jewelry shop on Chartres St. to open so I could exchange something I’d bought the day before. Neither of my walking companions are shoppers, so it was very nice of them to wait as long as they did. That’s us above, waiting for the shop to open on our forth attempt to get in. Totally worth the wait though, because I upgraded my former purchase to a pendant style fleur-de-lis necklace and matching earrings. Then it was on to K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen for dinner, where hubby and I pigged out on the luscious Creole food. Nothing like it! I think I ate a different kind of bread pudding almost every night down there. Awesome stuff.

Day one in the Big Easy started off with a sense of adventure and only got better as time went by. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky the entire week we were there, and the temperature stayed in the upper 80s every day. Not bad for the beginning of October, when the rain and wind usually hits full force here in Vancouver.

Hubby had us staying at the Laneaux Mansion on the edge of the French Quarter, where some of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was filmed. We had our own private cottage to stay in, complete with kitchenette (which we never used because of all the amazing restaurants to choose from) and our own little bricked courtyard filled with thriving plants. Pretty romantic.

After breakfast we wandered up Chartres Street to the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest Catholic Cathedral in the US. Hubby lit a candle in honor of his late mother, and then we started touring the Quarter and all its pretty little shops. I was in my glory 🙂 I even tried on a beautiful corset at The Trashy Diva. It was pretty, but not very comfortable and hubby would have had to lace me in and out of the thing. Considering how expensive it was, those factors made it a definite no.

Now, you might be thinking that this was the greatest surprise ever concocted by a husband for their wife. But you’d be wrong, because something even better happened just after lunch time.

We’d wandered back to Jackson Square, presumably to take more photos, and then I sat on the grass in the shade to read The Cajun Night Before Christmas, which I’d bought for the weasels. I’m about three pages in when all of a sudden I hear a woman call my name.

My head snaps up. No way, someone knows me down here?

I turn my head, and who should I see standing before me but my very own critique partner, Katie Reus. My jaw fell open. We’ve been working together for almost two years now, but I’ve never actually met her in person. She lives about 90 minutes from New Orleans and was planning to try and come up here to Vancouver in the New Year, so meeting her in the middle of Jackson Square was a complete shock. I was verra happy to see her, as you can see below. I think I might have left bruises on her from my bear hug 😉 Hubby had once again taken me completely by surprise and set this whole thing up–and didn’t breathe a word about it despite giving me grief for wanting to see her while we were down there. What a guy.

Once I got over my squealing and hugging episode, we headed over to the famous Cafe du Monde (open since the 1860s) and got some beignets and cafe au lait to snack on while we caught up and watched the Mississippi roll by from the Moonwalk. We even got serenaded by a man named Leonard, who’s been busking along the Moonwalk for over 40 years singing tunes from legends such as James Brown and Otis Redding.

So here we are, waiting for the tour to start. We learned a lot of historical detail about the city that I didn’t know prior to the tour, so that satisfied the history junkie in me. But one of the stories was so gruesome my skin got up and crawled away while our guide told it. I’m going to post about it closer to Halloween, but suffice it to say the LaLaurie Mansion on Royal Avenue gave me the heebie jeebies. I couldn’t even walk past it after that without getting a shiver up my backbone. Hardly slept all that night thinking about the atrocities that happened in the place, so if I look a little tired in the shots of the next post, you’ll know why.