The Tour Between the States 2 - The Road to Monticello

"Mine eyes have felt the glory of an air conditioned bus

Where we sit in Southern luxury with very little fuss

We have breakfast at each new hotel, hot coffee is a must

The tour is moving on!"

Yeah, a Yankee Trails plug.

What could be nicer than stepping out into the morning in New Orleans and find our wonderful bus gone but replaced by a horse and carriage?A change in smell,as horse opportunity is added to the Big Easy.

A fast walk (with breath held) from the Sheraton brought to the many carriages hanging around N. Front Boulevard near Jackson Square....

We got in our seats and clipped clopped away. So weird to see people older than us walking faster in a brisk pace, lots of whom But this is the Big Easy so one of the two groups weren't paying attention. This was more of an architectural tour, which we went on the back avenues of the city where the busses can't squeeze in we got  
                                   
                              .                                      




These small homes, called shotgun homes (see you'd get a rifle, and as the saying goes... you fire a shot through the home - please remember to have opened both the front and rear doors and residents be made aware that a bullet will shortly be passing by),and the homes themselves have been rehabbed by the owners and they added these nice touches so New Orleans can see pretty, and not the shacks  of the poor and Katrina's never ending path of destruction of buildings, minds, and souls.   

Ward 9 of New Orleans has banned bus tours of the area, because most of what  you see is nothing. And where you do see something, it could very well be a new home built on the structure remnants and the family within.  So if the residents see a bus, all they know is that there's 40 or so people out there taking pictures or worse, just gawking at them and not asking permission. The contrast is amazing.  New Orleans will come back, better than ever. I do hope they can dunk that stink, though.

I asked the carriage driver if we'd be going near the City Court, the government building that Lee Harvey Oswald handed out his "Fair play for Cuba" flyers in the summer of 1963.  The young lady driver had no idea what or who I was talking about, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing.

City Jail Dallas/ Oswald killed here 11/24/63

The City will be tearing this edifice (the jail)  down soon, we were told. Ghosts always find a place to gather, when wrong was done to one - Not necessarily a person that was ever in the building, but can track a fellow spirit anywhere. Watch that space.

So the bus takes us to the amazing cemeteries that dot the city.  When you get laid to rest here, be sure to ask for flippers because you'll be above ground for a number of years but as more people join the tomb, you'll finally hit the swampy water of the delta around your box. But eventually, your bones will be moved (there are people who actually have this job) so that the latest of dear departed can squeeze into the top.  As a fan of the TV show NCIS-NOLA, we enjoyed the real "life" chases through this city of the dead.

As we're now at 95 degrees, we finally made it back to the bus for lunch.

Rest in Peace, y'all!

Next on the roster was lunch, being presented by The Elms, an 1869 mansion built in the Italianate style. That line was taken directly from the brochure.  I was really just drained out and even the stories about a German spy residing here in the 1930s and 40s, watching boats coming in and out of the port of New Orleans, and reporting to Berlin But it didn't help.  They could have told me anything (like Andy Kaufman lives on the second floor) as long as they kept the ice tea coming.  We had lunch of sandwiches and salads that seemed to have been leftovers from the last wedding rehearsal they had.

Here are the required pictures:

 

With the coming of evening came the reminder we had a riverboat cruise at 6:00 PM, we spent the afternoon breathing cool air in the bar area and our room.   Our tour guide and the bus driver came into the hotel lobby, and they were holding pitchforks and knives and pushed us to WALK to the boat, despite our objections to moving anything when the outside temperature was at Meltdown. The drunks that were still laying on the ground were starting to have a gelatin like quality, as if they were truly melting into the sidewalk.  Perhaps the water spray trucks in the morning have a wet mixture that keeps the stink in the French Quarter and reconstitutes back into their prone position.  We don't know.

And so after a 15 minute break to check our blood pressure, rehydrate the crispier seniors, and making sure we got on the same boat - there was only one, but some folks insisted on waiting for the next boat, which was just a Russian grain trawler.  Finally we resorted to black sacks over their heads and moved our more confused members to chairs in the dining, which was done just in time as the boat was moving away from the port.  Black sacks removed, and they saw this:

and all this...

The trip was slowed by a storm coming in,

so viewing outside of mighty Mississippi was limited, in a deluge.  Slowly we  returned to port, sated by a never ending buffet and alcohol.  We stepped off the ship, right into the rain and, because the bus  was at the hotel, walked back to the hotel,  exhausting me thoroughly, but the fun really began when we got to  our room and I was about to take my evening pills when I noticed there were no pills.  No Klonopin, no Amantadine, no Amitripiline, no nuvigil.  I am still not sure what happened.  Two days before we left on this trip, we both made sure our meds were stocked and ready to go. Whoops.  And so I would begin  the descent into whatever Mr. MS Hyde would be.

Jackie would have a new playmate in the morning.  We still had five days to go.

And I'm back!