The Rest of the Day

There was way too much to put this all in one post. After our great Garden District tour Karla and I went to lunch at the French Quarter. I had a hot tip from Beth that we needed to try the original muffuletta. I love those so I talked Karla into it which wasn't too hard. She is so up for anything. Central Grocery had a big ol' line. Out the door even but it only took about 1/2 an hour to get through it. 

 

At least there were interesting things to look at in the aisles of the store while we waited.

You fight for a seat in the back and devour lunch and make room for others.I loved the whole experience. I wrapped half the sandwich up for Mendis to enjoy as per his request. So after lunch we were ready for our next tour: the New Orlean's City Tour. Our first guide had really told us so much there wasn't much we didn't already know but it was still fun to do it.

We went to the city park which was huge and rather famous.

We drove down the trolley lines to get there and went right past a bunch more mansions along the way.

We got a closer look at the Super Dome as well.

On both tours we got to check out the famous cemeterys. They use crypts for two reasons. It was a European tradition that the original settlers brought with them and it helped with the shallow water table and flooding. While this tour's cemetery was more famous and huge we both like the first one we visited at the Garden District the best.

 

This partial column signified a death cut this life short.

So creepy looking

This was the first cemetery we went to.

We learned that the walls here even contained bodies. The Catholic church was against cremation but when bodies were laid in the crypts in these outer walls in about 3 years they were essentially cremated because of the heat here. So they would just scrape the bodies to the back where they would fall down through the opening in the back and accumulate. They just kept scraping and adding to it over the years. Family togetherness I suppose!

This day I logged about 17,000 steps because after the second tour of the day we did some shopping as well. We searched everywhere for those cookies and checked out the Pralines as well.

These were the cream of the crop and believe me Karla & I did our research!
It is such fun to wander through the French District and shop. Lots of fun stuff to look at like candy and antiques and you name it.

That night we went to a fun little restaurant all together and tried out some alligator bites for appetizers. It made my mouth tingle so I only had one piece and stopped. The fish and chips was divine though!

Alligator

 After dinner one of the wives gave us the highlights of the ghost tour they took the day before. Very fun

This restaurant always has a table for one set in the back for the man who hung himself on the balcony!

Then since we were there we thought we better go see Bourbon Street. Not our favorite. I guess you have to see it once but twenty minutes was more than enough for us. It's loud, smells bad and nothing but strip clubs and bars I think. There was wall to wall people. People even brought their kids to see it??  More in your face than Vegas and alot dirtier too. There were homeless people, drunks and dogs everywhere. Yup twenty minutes was more than enough.