Howe Two: N'Awlins

Matt and I just returned from a kid-free trip to New Orleans. According to Adrienne, we were on a field trip. He had a conference to attend, and since neither of us had ever been there before, I decided to tag along. We had four days of constant good food, lots of walking and exploring, a little shopping, and a spontaneous trip to the spa for me (thanks to a rainy afternoon with Matt occupied at conference). Our hotel was gorgeous (thanks to the SCBT-MR for holding their conference at the Ritz) and within the French Quarter so was safe for walking for me. A huge thanks to my mom for willingly coming here to take care of the girls (and to my dad for sharing her with us)!

Mom arrived Thursday afternoon to get settled and updated on the routine before we left on Saturday. The girls were so happy to snuggle in to read with her

My Sunday breakfast. Yes, I ate all three of those beignets, and yes, they were amazing. I heart Cafe Du Monde. I took Matt back on Monday because I am such a good wife.

Goofy selfie before Sunday night's dinner--headed to NOLA, which is one of Emeril's restaurants and ended up being both of our favorite meals of the trip.

You see some crazy stuff in New Orleans. Most of that crazy stuff is unsuitable for photographing, and certainly unsuitable for this blog....trying to keep it PG on here!

Monday morning I wondered to a patisserie and had a pretty awesome croissant and cappuccino while seated at this table in a little nook overlooking the street.

Loved this assortment of doorbells for various apartments within this building.

Monday afternoon we decided to take a cruise on the Steamboat Natchez down the Mississippi River. We were up on the top deck for most of it

Domino sugar. Did you know they produce 7 MILLION pounds of sugar every single day?!?!?

Rollin on the river

We wandered down to the engine room. Pretty hot in there.

Checking out the workings of the boat.

We passed several large ships and barges on the cruise. Here you can see a worker on a Panama-based ship waving at us.

Part of this building was blown away by Hurricane Katrina. When they replaced the brick, they added a nice little message.

One of many "live statues" we saw in N'Awlins

On Tuesday, we spent the morning on a tour of St Louis Cemetery. No one else registered for the tour, so we had a private tour with a quirky little tour guide. She was FULL of information and we learned so so much. I wasn't super excited about this tour at first (Matt's idea), but it ended up being my favorite part of the trip. It was crazy-fascinating and we learned so much. I told Matt that I really must be starting to get old because I actually am interested in all this historical stuff, architecture, etc. I completely regret not paying more attention in history classes in high school and not taking any in college.

One of my favorite tombs. I loved the flower on top. The family actually owned this plot and tomb (yes, you can rent them--more on that later), so they were allowed to paint it. A man paints it to honor his grandmother who loved bright colors.

Gorgeous crosses and unique ironwork everywhere

And signs of "life" where death lies...plants and weeds growing out of the tops and sides of many tombs

Crazy, random offerings at the foot of the tomb of Marie Laveau (the famous voodoo priestess of New Orleans)

Offerings atop her tomb

This eyesore is to be the tomb of Nicholas Cage. He apparently fell in love with New Orleans, bought this plot and built a tomb where he intends to lie. All of this cost 12 MILLION DOLLARS. And it looks ridiculous and disrespectful.

Leaving kisses for Nicholas...so strange. The man is still alive, people!

Life

Fleur de lis ironwork

Apartment style tombs. The various tombs mimic housing styles--you can rent an apartment, or build a condo or house on a plot. Plots run about $50,000, then you have to pay to build the tomb. Wild huh? What's even crazier is how the bodies are laid to rest. They do not use sealed caskets, just wooden coffins. Bodies are NOT embalmed and are sealed in the tombs for one year and one day. After this time they are almost totally decomposed--the heat within the tomb basically cremates the body. The tomb is then opened after 366 days and the remains (basically ash) are pushed to the back, where they fall down a chute and into the ground. New Orleans is on a swamp, so there isn't any bedrock below. The swamp waters rise and fall over time and basically absorb the remains into the dirt below. Now the tomb is ready for another body. This is how generation after generation of family members can be buried in one spot. Assuming everyone dies at least 366 days apart from one another, there isn't any limit to how many bodies can be buried in one tomb.

A brief respite from the sun within the cemetery. You can see the sun trying to burn through that palm tree...it was hot as blazes that day.

This tomb held the remains of just one man and his wife. They desired for no one else to ever be buried with them because they loved each other so much. I hope they didn't have children, or this would have probably really ticked them off!

A row of the oldest tombs. White paint used to be the most expensive, so colored tombs were the norm at that time.

After all that info on a scorching hot morning, we had to refuel. We walked a few blocks back into the Quarter to Central Grocery, which is an authentic Italian grocery store that invented the muffaletta sandwich. We shared a sandwich and really, we should have shared a half. The whole sandwich was about the size of an entire pie and was loaded with cheese, salamis, pickled peppers, and olive relish. Totally divine, and totally bad for you. It hit the spot!

After a nice long nap, we cleaned up and set out to ride the St Charles street car through the Garden District (antebellum mansions galore!) and to the other side of town to eat at a cute little local restaurant inside a little house. I felt like we were on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood