7-12-09 Sunday (Missing House Poster)

For those that haven’t been to New Orleans, should definitely consider it.  I’m thinking that it’s definitely not a good place for people avoiding alcohol.  Well, probably not a good place for a prude either!

Open alcohol is permitted in the streets.  The only rule is no glass!  If you bought a bottle of beer in one bar, they usually have plastic cups near the door for you to transfer the booze.  Many places will allow drinks from somewhere else in.  Some do not.  The frozen drink places are awesome.  They usually have 12 or so machines with alcohol-frozen drinks.  I’ve tried many flavors and all have been great so far.  I still have more to go.

We’ve also discovered Bourbon Street is alive every night of the week.  It’s pretty busy during the day but in the evenings, a lot of the street are closed off to vehicle traffic.  Many of the sex shops and bars have people standing outside them asking/screaming/begging/whatever for your business.

Now that you’ve become a party specialist, we’ll move on to today’s adventures.  Jim and I took another tour.  This was the Hurricane Katrina Tour which met at the same spot as the paddle boat and city tour.  Yep, another 2 for 1 coupon too!  We’ve saved so much money!  Anyway, the website description:

An eyewitness account of the events surrounding the most devastating natural - and man-made - disaster on American soil!

Learn the history of the original city, the French Quarter, and why it was built at this particular location along the Mississippi River.

We'll drive past an actual levee that "breached" and see the resulting devastation that displaced hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents.

The direct connection between America 's disappearing coastal wetlands, oil & gas pipelines, levee protection and hurricane destruction will be explained.

Your tour guide will give a "local's" chronology of events leading up to Hurricane Katrina and the days immediately following the disaster.

This tour will travel through neighborhoods such as Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard, and the Ninth Ward.

You'll be amazed at the volume and variety of products "offloaded" in the multimodal port of New Orleans , the second largest port in the country, and then distributed to your hometown.

Did you know that 30% of the seafood (fish, crabs, shrimp, oysters, and crawfish) harvested in the lower 48 states comes from the coastal wetlands in South Louisiana?

After this tour, you'll have a better understanding of events pre and post Katrina and the "Rebirth of New Orleans"!

The most interesting to me was about Six Flags in New Orleans.  Their pumps failed, submerging the park in up to 7 feet of water of brackish water for a month.  The salt destroyed everything except one high ground ride.  They don’t own the land.  The park was a loss, they offer the Mayor money to get out of the lease, he declined, and now Six Flags is bankrupt, and New Orleans probably won’t get a dime as a result.  The link above has all the Katrina – Six Flags stuff.

Here’s photos:

Above: A sculpture dedicated to Hurricane Katrina.

 

Above: FEMA trailer.

 

Above: Another FEMA trailer.

 

Above: 33 levees breached.  Earthen levees (like hills) were intact but the ones which were walls failed.  You can see the color difference in the wall which shows old and new.

 

Above: Look for the water line.

 

Above: The X shows the date, people rescued, alive, dead, who the rescue team was, etc.

 

Above: Can you see the levee is higher than the homes?  Can you see many empty lots where homes once stood?

 

Above: I was surprised there was still a foundation.  Many lots are grassy now.

 

Above: The Superdome is remodeled.

We’re back from the tour.  It was very informative.  We learned a great deal about what happened, and what they’ve done to fix the deficiency's to protect themselves from future problems.  Did you know the pump stations had no generators at the time (they do now) so they couldn’t work.  Did you know that even if they did work, the pump station staff was sent home for their safety?  Now the pump stations have protective housing like the Coast Guard uses.

 

Above: Is that Garret guy fascinated by restrooms or something?  I heard that!  Well, I was with this one.  It’s a men and child family room.  The toilet on the left is child sized.  I’ve never seen that before.  This was in the Jackson Brewery mall.

 

Above: This just tickled me.  I’m sure there’s a great caption for this.  Suggestions?

 

Above: Mississippi River.

 

Above: Riverside walkway, Jackson Brewery mall in the background.

 

Above: Aside from Swingers and Leathermen, perhaps a Medieval convention?

 

Above/Below: A fleamarket with many trinkets.  I’m sure this is the best place to buy your made-in-China New Orleans souvenir.

 

Above: One of the hundreds of cool buildings.  All buildings are Spanish architecture except for a handful of French buildings that survived the fires.  New Orleans was settled by French, at some point was under Spanish control, back to French control and eventually sold to the US by Napoleon. 

 

 

Later in the evening, we went on a Vampire walking tour.  I didn’t get many photos because it was dark.

 

Cool stuff!  Lots of walking, but we need the exercise and walking around this awesome city is … well, awesome.

Good night!