Category: Things To See

We gave the bus another shot. It literally stops right in front of where we are staying but it does not follow the posted schedule on the app at all. Mike found another site that does a better job of following it in real time, but it is still on perfect. We rode the bus to near the French Quarter. We walked down St. Ann Street or Santa Ana as it was called during the Colonial Spanish period to Jackson Square. It had lots of interesting buildings from beautifully restored to shacks.

We sat on a bench and people watched for awhile. It was a nice overcast 70 degree day with a breeze. I thought it was pretty busy for a Thursday. The statue in the middle of the square is of Andrew Jackson…the hero of the Battle for New Orleans.

Jackson Square
Bound by Chartres Street & St. Ann Street, Decatur Street & St. Peter Street

Website

We managed to figure out the bus (for today at least) and headed for the French Quarter. Our bus stop was right at this park. The park is located by the historic Congo Square where early enslaved and free people of color gathered to socialize and is important in the history of jazz. There is a water feature with many bridges, plants, statues and a cobble stone area where the historic site actually was.

Louis Armstrong Park
835 N. Rampart St.
New Orleans, LA 70116

Website

We got to the NOMA just after opening. It is located in City Park across the road from where we are staying. We used our Kimball Art Museum pass to get in at no cost. We chose to skip the Fashion exhibit today. That would have cost extra.

The building was a study in symmetry. It was divided into galleries based on style. We were surprised about how empty it felt. Few guest and only a handful of docents guarding the place. In the museums at home, there is someone watching in every gallery.

We saved the third floor for another day.

New Orleans Museum of Art
One Collins C. Diboll Circle, City Park
New Orleans, Louisiana 70124

Website

Since we were in Slidell, we decided to take a swamp tour. Captain Jason, aka CaptainPipp, was very knowledgeable and gave us lots of information on the ecology, plants, and animals. We saw wild hogs, raccoons, several types of birds, and of course alligators. The boat held 20ish people but Captain Jason was able to interact with all of us. We are planning on a private swamp tour so this was a great introduction. We drove ourselves, so we saved money and could leave when we were done.

Cajun Encounters Swamp Tours
553345 US-90
Slidell, LA 70461

Website

We visited the Crescent City Farmer’s Market. There are three weekly markets throughout the city. The market closest to us is at City Park on Sundays 8-12. This market mostly had farm things, veggies, eggs, gumbo, juices, and dessert. We bought a loaf of bread, salted chocolate chunk cookies, fresh pasta, a passion fruit caramel filled donut and crab gumbo and rice.

The produce was very tempting…..eggplant, squash blossoms, mushrooms, zucchini, tomatoes, etc…. There were jelly and pickle sellers, too. Very different from the farmer’s market near us that have lots of crafts.

It was really nice strolling through the park to the market and shop. Lots of interesting people, dogs and music. Some of the other markets have different venders. The line to the coffee sellers was too long or an iced coffee would have been perfect.

Website

Our Fort Worth Botanical Garden membership got us in for free. Besides the gardens there was a Fall Garden Fest occurring. This garden is much smaller than the FWBG. It did have a nice variety of plants…especially shade plants. The paths were a mix of brick, gravel and shells. The garden had a water lily house, cactus house, fern conservatory, tropical conservatory, miniature train display and test gardens. The garden was built between 1935 and 1936 by the WPA. It has many works of art by the Mexican artist Enrique Alferez.

There is a plant sale going on with lots of native plants, herbs, bonsai and crafts.

It was a good slow travel day. We slept late. Ate breakfast at leisure. Then walked through the park to get to the garden. We used the garden pass from home to get in at no additional cost. We walked around saw what we wanted to see. We found benches and sat under ancient oaks while enjoying the plants surrounding us. It started to get crowded so we decided to leave and return during a slower weekday. We did not feel the need to buy anything.

Our planned stop at Cafe Du Monde to grab some beignets and coffee was derailed by a long line of tour bus people. So we came home and made ourselves lunch. We will just go back during the week when the place is pretty much empty.

There is an outdoor train exhibit running G & O scale. It had various New Orleans locations from the past.

There were some Halloween themed decorations

Of course there were many pretty plants and flowers

New Orleans Botanical Gardens
5 Victory Ave
New Orleans, LA 70124

Website

We met Terry here who gave us a tour of the memorial. The layout is in the shape of a hurricane outlined with bald cypress trees. Is is dedicated to the unclaimed victims of the hurricane.

Hurricane Katrina Memorial
5056 Canal St
New Orleans, LA 70119

Iron work is very common in New Orleans. It is a nod to the diverse countries that influenced the the early settlers who made NOLA their home. The work was often done by West African slaves. There is a lot of hidden symbolism in the detains.

These are some examples that date as far back as the 1840’s that we found on our cemetery tour.

This was next to Morning Call Coffee Stand. We first saw the Elk and Firemen Statues

Next was Peter Peterson’s Vault who really loved his wife.

Finally we saw other vaults and lots of ironwork in both Greenwood and Cypress Grove Cemeteries

Greenwood Cemetery
5190 Canal Blvd
New Orleans, LA

Website

New Orlean’s City Park is just two blocks from our Airbnb. Here are some of the cool things we saw. This post will be updated as the month goes on.

City Park has many old Live Oak trees, some more that 600 years old.

We walked along Bayou Metairie.

The Peristyle was interesting. We saw someone taking photographs here

Some other areas of the Park

More info on City Park:
Website
City Park (New Orleans) – Wikipedia