St Patricks day in New Orleans

St. Patricks day in New Orleans, was overwhelming, I can not imagine what Mardi Gras must be like.

We headed for the city early as we had an early tour, which meant we had to take the truck in again, which was not a problem until after the parade, getting home, wow.

My favorite dish in New Orleans has to be the gumbo, and here is a restaurant sign with the name, although tonight I had Creole Jambalya Pasta which was crammed full of the most delicious shrimp and alligator sausage, it was awesome.

Anyway enough about food going to have to get back on the dreaded scale sometime soon.

We started our day with a cemetry/voodoo tour.

The cemetry we visited was one of New Orleans first and had many important people resting here. Some of the tombs are very big and hold lots of people.

Most of the time you could not get into the cemetry after you die but money talks, here is a tomb recently purchased by Nicolas Cage.

This is the tomb of the infamous voodoo queen Marie Laveau.

After a couple of hours in the cemetry and the guide telling us all about voodoo practices he dropped us off at a voodoo temple and disappeared. Well it was an experience, kinda eerrie but we got out unscathed.

The actual temple is just so full of stuff, here are some of the candles they burn for rituals.




I was very glad to leave the premises.

After the tour we had a wonderful lunch of gumbo and shrimp po boys.

Then we took a ride on the Creole Queen down river to the sight of the Battle of New Orleans.

Today was over 80 so the ride on the river was wonderful.

This is the Beauregard House which was built on the battlefield 18 years later.


This is the monument built on the Chalmette Battlefield, you will remember the song about the soldiers running through the brambles down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, this is the battle.

Here is another paddlewheeler heading upriver, the Natchez is a popular tour but does not go to the battlefield.

Along the way we pass Dominion Sugar if you look close you can see the big bucket unloading the sugar.

Here is a picture of our paddlewheeler after we are docked back in New Orleans

So some last minute shopping for Tanya, another, but unfortunatly our last New Orleans dinner and we head for Decateur Street for the Saint Patrick day parade, but Elaine finds friends along the way. Everyone is getting a little tipsy about now and it is only 6pm.

The parade is to start at 6:30pm so we stop to wait, they forgot to tell us the parade stops at all the Irish Bars for a refill so here we are at 8:30, still no parade but the crowds are growing.

Oh, here comes the parade now, many, many drunken Irishmen wanting kisses for their beads and gifts, one funny evening, what a great time.

So tomorrow we do a swamp tour and get Tanya to the airport, we are going to miss her very much.