We drove over to Maple St. to find a breakfast place we had recommended to us. We first saw the Maple St. Cafe and I walked up and tried to open the door and then realized they weren't even open. We walked back to the car and eyed PJ's Coffee in front of us and considered there for breakfast, and then I looked one sign down and saw Maple St. Patisserie. It's right across the street and as soon as I saw it I realized that was the place recommended, and they were open. People must get confused all the time between the two if they have never been there.
The patisserie was very cute with a case of scrumptious looking pastries, and my sweet cheese pastry was amazingly good. We sat briefly to eat our pastries and then started off for the City Park to see their sculptures and their mossy oaks. Let me stop here and explain the roads. There are a lot of narrow one way streets. The streets are some of the worst I think I have ever been on (if we are discussing paved streets). There are so many bumps, holes, and just plain uneven spots. People driving their cars here must have plenty of alignment and shock issues.
We arrived at the park without too much trouble and found a different kind of beauty than I have seen before. These broad live oak trees were dripping with moss. All over trees have these light grayish-green moss extensions, similar to the look of draping strands of silver and gold on a Christmas tree.
There were several bridges over ponds, but a few that were quite lovely. I asked a young man on one of the bridges who had a rather nice camera to take a picture of Katrina and I. Turns out he is a professional photographer from Jamaica who was supposed to meet a client who had just canceled so he was building his portfolio up in the park.
It was just about ten in the morning but it felt so warm and sticky and I was sweating without really doing anything. This is why my B&B hosts from Pennsylvania said they move slower in the south. I understand. We walked around and then walked through the sculpture garden, which has much more modern pieces of sculpture. We saw some fun areas for children - one called Storybook land and a carousel.
We then drove out to Oak Alley Plantation, the famous plantation used in many many movies and advertisements, videos, etc. It was a really beautiful location, with Virginia Live Oaks lining the pathway up to and away from the mansion. We were met by tour guides dressed in the appropriate antebellum attire. We walked through the different rooms, first the parlor and then dining room and upstairs to the bedrooms. The parlor is where the lady of the house would bring the young girls to meet potential suitors. Because of this, there was a convex mirror to be able to see all corners of the rooms. There were also candles in a candlestick holder that could be raised or lowered depending on how much the suitor was liked which would shorten or lengthen the time he could spend with the lady. I also learned that the bigger the silverware, the more wealthy the family.
We were able to go out onto the upper porch and view over the land. After walking out, we also walked the gardens and the grounds. This particular plantation owner also apparently freed several slaves and then gave them the choice to continue with him, being paid for their service. I wonder what the statistics are of slave owners who freed their slaves and how many people living in the south actually owned slaves, after all it was not cheap to purchase a slave.
We visited the gift shop and had a snack before we headed back out to New Orleans. Thunderstorms were rolling in and we could hear the claps and see the bolts in the distance. We consider a few other plantations, and stopped by Laura Plantation, but decided not to take the tour. We just didn't have enough time to do everything, so it's been just a sampling of the highlights.
On our drive back we noticed the little communities off the highways. There were some that were not much more than a lot of broken down mobile homes and small old houses where it was a clearly poor community and then right next to it would start larger plots of land with nice, more affluent looking homes. Then there would be another broken down home again, or a mobile home. Katrina and I were commenting that in the bigger cities it seems to be whole neighborhoods or areas of poverty or wealth, but here they are mixed together much more. I guess in small communities such as these you don't have the separation, or enough people, to really be separated and in your own little world. In Orange County we can live in our gated communities or our cities and stay relatively ignorant of the poverty around us, it doesn't seem so in these little towns.
We returned to the French Quarter and parked in the same lot we did the previous night. I had picked up a self-guided walking tour flyer on the last train, so I pulled that out and we began to navigate through the narrow streets. I decided quickly that I liked the French Quarter better in the daytime versus night. It didn't feel quite as sketchy and not so many people either high or drunk. Plus there were a lot of interesting shops to pop into.
We saw plenty of homes that were famous people of New Orleans that I had never heard of. Some were the older homes and noted for a particular aspect of it's architecture. The facades and interesting, but I'm sure the beauty of the homes and the courtyard lay beyond the gates and walls that blocked us out. Many of the porches and the ironwork were particularly interesting. The unique signs of the shops were also fun to look at. The sidewalks are just as bad as the roads though, so we tripped every so many feet over some crack, dip, or loose brick.
We spent little time on Bourbon street, being it's more touristy and commercialized and from the little I saw just a lot of bars and restaurants. I really like the boutiques and art galleries along Royal Street. Jackson Square was breathtaking with it's view of St. Louis Cathedral and the French influenced Louisiana museums on either side. I snapped a picture of the Jackson statue (since he was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans) as well as Pirate's Alley where he is said to have made a deal with the pirates to help him defeat the British in the final battle of the War of 1812 (which actually had officially ended a month earlier unbeknownst to him).
We found William Faulkner's home (the yellow one below) and the home of the grandfather of Edgar Degas. I didn't realize that Degas has so many ties to New Orleans. We saw the area where Andrew Jackson had been help in contempt of court after the battle. There was also a house that had a cornstalk gate, said to be ordered by a general whose wife was from one of the "I" states (I think Iowa) and missed the cornstalks.
There were plenty of street musicians, but one large band was playing in front of Jackson Square some very fun jazz music. We heard music playing that sounded like it was straight out of Disneyland or an old time cartoon and followed it to the dock areas of the Mississippi River where in the near distance was a steamboat I'm sure it was coming from.
There were masks in every shop, as well as beads, and there were quite a few specialty hat shops. One hat shop had a number of beautiful fancy hats with these darling pink hat boxes. It was closed by the time we found it so I couldn't go in, and had I been able to, I might be carrying a fancy hat box with a fancy hat with me right now. We did stop in a more casual hat shop and put on a few. After we walked out, Katrina stopped and excitedly yelled I had walked out with a hat of there's on! I stopped quickly, my heart racing, afraid I had accidentally shoplifted. Then I remembered it was my hat, and I pulled it off to check. It was, but Katrina took a bit convincing since she hadn't remembered it looking like that! Luckily I had a small tag with the word Target written on it, which finally helped convince her I had not committed a mistaken identity of a hat. It was a good laugh to us both. There was a lot of beautiful art as well, but much of that was more than I was going to spend.
We were able to walk into a few courtyard areas that were art galleries which was quite lovely. They are pretty little retreats from the streets. One courtyard had a fountain someone had put bubbles in and it was overflowing. It gave a nice little effect, but the courtyard was a little creepy. Plenty of New Orleans is a little creepy. I think it's in part due to the voodoo. A lot of places said they were haunted. I have to say that I would not want to be in New Orleans during Marti Gras and I was warned to stay away from Bourbon street overall since it was a mixture of vomit, urine, and disinfectant.
There were a few people Katrina eyed, suspecting they were going to try to steal my purse. One guy she saw clearly came around me and looked inside the middle pouch of my purse. She was alarmed, but he did nothing, all unbeknownst to me. I assured her though that my purse would not come off easily should they try to steal it since I wore it across my chest and since my mother had made it, it was strong and the straps are not separate since it's really more of a sling bag style. The two outer pockets are zippered and all valuables are safely tucked in there. The guy saw there was nothing in the middle pouch worth grabbing and running with. I was overall pretty careful about that and kept making sure my iPhone was put away and my purse was usually in the front of me.
All the different planters and decorations on the fronts of the houses were also interesting to look at. There were two plants hanging down off a balcony that looked like elephant heads to me and their long leafy trunks hanging down. The flowers at the top looked like they were decorating just above their ears, like a girl would put a flower in her hair. I loved it so I took a picture (seen below). There were a lot of flags, American flags, LSU flags, Saints flags... There are also many different tour guides that drive horse-drawn carriages around. One guide pulled up on the side of the street next to Katrina and I and asked me if I could do something for him. He had a carriage full of people. I said, "Maybe," not sure what he would ask. He pulled out a carrot and asked me to feed the mule (okay, so this was a mule-drawn carriage), to which I happily did. Then he made some funny comments about the mule, last of which to see his mule was the best ass in town.
We finished in the French district shortly after most of the boutiques and galleries shut down and decided to eat a nice dinner on Maple Street in the Black Pearl area by our house stay. We took our hosts' recommendation and went to Jamila's in a little natural wooden building that smelled like fresh cut wood in the hallway. The restaurant was elegantly set up with white lights in the window, white table clothes and candlelight, but the owner was a gregarious welcoming gentleman with an accent (he speaks English, French and Arabic, so I'm sure it was a combination of those three). Jamila is his wife and the cook. He was so warm and kind that we couldn't help but enjoy his restaurant.
Katrina and I both had the couscous with chicken (it had a fancier French name, but I couldn't tell you what it is). First we had the bread and pita with a delicious garlic herb butter. The couscous had a savory red sauce with squash and chicken to put on top. It was very good. When he mentioned dessert, we decided to order and I had an excellent creme brulee (I like it when the top is thick and crunchy, and this was). We sat there for awhile and finally Katrina figured out we needed to ask for the bill because being the amazing host he was, they won't bring it out until then. They are incredibly attentive, and they asked if we needed anything multiple times, but it's clear they want their patrons to feel wanted and welcomed, never hurried or that they just want your money and to move you out.
The owner walked us out, gave us business cards, made some small talk and sent warm regards to our hosts (who he knew). If I lived there, I would certainly return. I would also recommend this place, even though it mostly served fish and lamb. I'm not a big fish fan nor lamb fan, so there was a fairly limited menu, but I would try them fish or lamb at some point from there if I returned. Walking down the sidewalk though, Katrina started to jump about and yell because a cockroach was scurrying around her. Then I saw two more and I, too, did a little dance to get past these gross insects. It was pretty funny to watch!
We made the short drive back to our little apartment in the double shotgun house. I turned on the last of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, in time to see the final torch brought to their unique cauldron. It was time to wash off the stickiness of the humid New Orleans air. It is amazing how it feels like a perpetual sauna outside. The news also let me know there were 4 murders in New Orleans that day. Now, don't fear, the murders were in a different area than we were in and they were not random crime. Still...there was a reason I was warned by many about the city and we had lots of instructions by our hosts about where to go and how to stay safe (not that they felt we were unsafe, but their instructions were mostly that common sense not everyone uses when traveling in the cities). But we are safe and nothing has gone wrong.
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Location:Pearl St,New Orleans,United States
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