Anyway, back to good old New Orleans. Still in love.
Tuesday we did, surprise, more exploring! We took a cemetery tour, which was awesome. I am a super nerd, and loved learning about the city, Voodoo, and those cemeteries. I knew basically zilch about New Orleans before coming, so it was all very new and cool!
Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1! You can only get into this cemetery these days with a tour guide, they have a guard at the gate. Epic.
I literally knew nothing about the burial practices in New Orleans, only that they had old cemeteries and I wanted to check them out. Turns out, they're very different from our cemeteries here in Texas. Everyone is in a tomb! It floods so often that burying people underground means floating bodies, so centuries or so ago they decided to start keeping their dead above ground in tombs. It's so hot there, that once you die you're placed in a pine box at the top of the tomb and left for a year and one day where you are basically cremated into dust by the gases your body lets off and the heat of New Orleans. Then your dust is placed in a bag at the bottom of the tomb with all your other relatives! IT IS SO NEAT. And like really green and space efficient. I had no idea, and was completely awed by the genius of the whole thing. The more you know!
There are a ton of these cemeteries around New Orleans, this one is the most famous I guess. It's very old, like folks born in the 1700's are buried here! And it's kind of hodge-podged put together, you could definitely get lost in that little block of tombs.
Nick Cage's tomb that he has already purchased, awaiting his demise. Such a weirdo.
The Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau's tomb! We knocked three times and made a wish of sorts. I'm hoping since we share a name, it will come true.
I originally planned on wearing cuter shoes but after walking a few miles in them, I was like NOPE. Tennis shoes it was, for the rest of the trip. Cute or not. Being multiple bowling balls heavier than normal means my feet (whole skeleton?) can't hang.
Hello, here are extra derpy Hogan faces. We do our best.
New Orleans is seriously, such an amazing place. The food! The coffee! We did not have a single bad meal. And there is GOOD coffee on basically every corner, plus we had a killer espresso bar in the lobby of our hotel. Dangerous. I have no idea how many coffees (and accompanying pastries...) I had.
And I want to talk about how nice everyone was. Everyone we interacted with was so friendly and kind and just generally nice. Sometimes in big cities you encounter the opposite, but this place is so welcoming! And everyone loves pregnant women, oh my gosh. Even homeless dudes on the street offered congratulations. Everyone was asking when I was due, telling me nice things. The lady at the Cafe du Monde store was telling us that her grandson had a baby at the end of January, and he is sweet and his baby is sweet so our kid will be sweet too. And when we set up our cemetery tour the lady assured me that our baby would be born on the 30th, her birthday. With serious certainty! Everyone was just so great. I had a few qualms about New Orleans and visiting while pregnant especially, but gosh, it was wonderful. That being said, we basically explored only during the day. It's a different beast at night. Although even then I never really felt scared. There were sketchy moments, but I felt safe for the most part. And it is a seriously lovely city during the day. Cannot say that enough. I explored on my own and felt not the least bit worried! New Orleans, you surprised the heck out of me. You are such a charmer!
That's all for today, folks. Check out the rest of the trip here!
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