New Orleans

We decided to take a day off from the parades on Monday and get out of the city. Well that was the plan but it took us a little longer to get out than expected. We went to the north of the city and John drove us around in an area where one of the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina. It actually didn't look that bad, the houses are really nice and the roads well maintained. We stopped off at Lake Pontchartrain, the water is a dirty,dull brown and the lake is contained by an earthen bank. You can just visualise what would happen if one of those banks broke or the water rose to go over them. The city is so flat that there is no way to stop the water going where it will. We went to the Ninth Ward, scene of the worst flooding. The area still looks devastated, what houses are still there are boarded up, there are maybe about twenty new houses. The rest of the area is weed choked, any moment you expect to see the tumbleweeds blowing through. It's absolutely awful, there is nothing there except a motorway and railway lines. I can't imagine that it was a great place to live before the storm hit. I don't know what the public transport system was like, but now I suspect you would definitely need a car to get there, which is the worst possible thing. New Orleans needs more pollution, contributing to global warming just like it needs help from FEMA! The street signs are hand painted, the roads pot-holed and an air of desolation hangs over the whole area. I suspect that money alone is not going to revitalise this area and maybe it shouldn't be rebuilt. New Orleans population is much smaller now and the French Quarter is half empty. The city council could reduce the size of the city for the people that remain and they may be able to save it for the future.
We left the city behind and went to see another part of New Orleans history, albeit not as recent. We first went to Oakalley Plantation, as the name suggests the front of the house is approached through an alley of Live Oak trees. This was a device to funnel what breeze there was to the house up from the river. We had lunch there in their restaurant, I got to try Catfish for the first time. I also had Alligator, but I've eaten that before in the U.K.. The Catfish was o.k., but I don't think I'll be ordering it again, it's not that great. Next we visited the Laura Plantation and took the house tour. The family were Creole, so they spoke French. As well as the plantation, which is where they did their business from they had several houses in the French Quarter. It was a slave owning plantation and the last slave home was lived in in the 1990's, but that was by travelling harvest staff and the houses had been renovated by then. The family were all about the business and everyone connected with the business could live in the main house and be fed from the main kitchens. When the matriarch retired from the business they made her move out, they did build her a new house in the grounds, but she also had to have her own kitchen to prepare her own food as she couldn't get food from the "business" kitchen. The last member of the family Laura was never happy on the plantation and she sold it to a German family and moved to Mississippi.
When we finished up at the plantation it was about time to head to the airport to pick up Fumiko's cousin, Misako. John was following his GPS system for directions but made a mistake, as he was doing a U-turn some guy who must have been following him too closely almost broadsided us and ran off the road. We stopped and John got out to go and see if he was OK, the guys response to John's "Are you OK?" was "Give me some f*****g money". John obviously said no and came back to the guy, the other guy then drew his truck up alongside ours and when John drove away started to follow us. I have to say, that combined with the near car wreck made for a nervous few minutes. The guy didn't follow us for long and we were all discussing what we would have done had the guy continued to follow us. You never know if the person has a gun here and if they do have a gun are they prepared to use it. After this drama we got to the airport on time and met Misako and tried to finish up our return journey to the city.
We were a few miles out when we hit a traffic jam on the interstate. John decided that he didn't want to sit in traffic and believed that he could find a way around the traffic and the closed roads (due to the parades). He was wrong and spent two hours fruitlessly driving around New Orleans, we even went across Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. Someone told me that if you go across MLK Blvd you are in a bad part of town and so far I am sad to say, the stereotype is holding up. However in New Orleans's case that might be a bit unfair considering everything the city has suffered in the past few years. Eventually John realised that Danny and I were ready to kill him and it might be an idea to stop and have dinner. This too turned into a production. John, with the best intentions in the world, wanted to take us to this great restaurant he had frequented when he was in university, so we made the drive there, which probably wasn't very long, but felt it. The restaurant was closed, at this point we're just like "stop at the next restaurant", he did and we all sat down to eat. I would say poor Misako, but she and Fumi were so busy catching up that I don't think they even noticed the super long return journey back to and around the city.
We figured that after dinner the roads around the start of the parade would have reopened and John wanted to go that way, I said no. We headed away from the start and got back onto the interstate and got off at the exit that is about two blocks away from our hotel. Danny and I went back to the room and the others, after dumping their stuff took Misako out to catch the end of the parades as this would be the last night. The Tuesday parades are all held during the day and pretty much done by 4pm. I was looking forward to a good nights sleep as the next day promised to be a long one. Danny and I still hadn't made it to Bourbon St. and we were determined to the next night and if possible get onto a balcony to throw some beads. I bedded down on the floor and hoped that the others wouldn't come back too late.