Sunday 1st October

The forecast for the morning was for rain and so we were pleasantly surprised when we woke to cloudy skies but dry conditions. So we headed out for a morning walk as I thought we should at least see the Mississippi River before we leave.

There’s a bit of a foreshore walk along the French Quarter but, given that the French Quarter’s not that big, nor is the foreshore walk. So we headed back to the apartment and Mark was very happy that we found a café that served a decent espresso.

Our morning tour didn’t start till 11 AM but we headed home to shower and get ready at leisure.

It was raining by the time we left the apartment for our Voodoo tour so the first stop was to buy some umbrellas. We also found a new hat shop for David!

With umbrellas in hand we headed up to the start of the Voodoo walking tour. Unfortunately, it was raining so hard that our guide, Robi, decided we would have to stay indoors for the tour. He gave an animated presentation for two hours, electing audience members at random for use as props, where he explained the history of his cherished Voodoo religion. A religion he said is more accurately known as ‘Voudo’.

Much of the negative public image afforded to Voodoo he blamed on Hollywood and went o to explain the many rituals and symbols had close parallels to Roman Catholicism. One other interesting point that Robi raised was that Beyoncé‘s mother was from New Orleans and that one of the classic dance movements she performs on stage is one that she learned from her mother. This party dance move involves her opening and closing her raised elbows and represents breaking the chains of slavery.

Overall, the Voodoo experience was an entertaining and most informative two hours and a tour that I would highly recommend.

It was 1pm by the time we left Robi and so we wandered back through the lanes of the French quarter looking for some T-shirts and somewhere to have lunch. We wanted somewhere with Wi-Fi too so ended up back at ‘Napoleons House’ for lunch, the place where we had lunch yesterday. This is a highly regarded and well known restaurant and, luckily for us, was just a few doors up from our AirBnB.

The weather had cleared by the end of our lunch and so we called by the apartment to drop off our umbrellas before heading back out. The destination for the afternoon was Jackson Square, to check out the local art and artists, and the French Markets.

The French Markets turned out be interesting as Mark found some rare Tabasco sauce offerings; ones that we can’t source at home.

There were plenty of other things we could have bought too, see below!

We filed in a couple of hours at these two venues before heading to another rest spot that just happened to sell beer. This venue, although small, managed to squeeze in 6 large TVs all showing, you guessed it, Football but this time NFL. Mark was also a hugely impressed by the number of craft beers that they had on tap!

On the way home we passed by Jackson Square again and found a great young guy trio performing live music. Mark was impressed enough to buy two of their discs only to learn they were both identical 🙁

Mark spent some time checking out highly rated venues for dinner and we were pleasantly surprised to find that one of them, NOLA,  was located right across the road from out apartment! We had a delicious meal there and one of the best I have out in a long time!  We turned in relatively early, again, as we had an early start in the am heading off to Boston.