19.6.2012 – 19.6.2012  33 °C

A nice leisurely start this morning before we headed back downtown to see the Louisiana State Museum. We spent hours wandering thru the Cabildo reading all of the exhibits and trying to understand the New Orleans history. The Cabildo was built during the Spanish rule of New Orleans and was built as the main meeting area for the ruling elite. It was also the place where the colony of Louisiana was officially handed over to the Unified American States at the conclusion of the Louisiana purchase.

I recounted some of the history in yesterday’s blog so won’t belabour the point. Some of the other interesting facts I got from the Cabildo today was about post Louisiana purchase and pre-civil war times (1806-1861). Most of the area bordering the Mississippi river (throughout Louisiana) was occupied by “planters”. Planters are the farmers who go on to build the huge cotton plantations and huge wealth. The plantations were run by free men (usually white, but not always, there were free black people in Louisiana) who predominantly used slave labour to pick and manage the cotton fields. The planters were both Creoles and Americans and became ridiculously wealthy off the backs of free labour. There were different kinds of slaves. Top of the tree was the Slave Managers then House slaves (domestic servants), Skilled slaves (builders etc) and finally the cotton pickers were the lowest slaves..  Post the civil war, many of the house and skilled slaves actually chose to stay on with the planters and continue to work for them, the poorer cotton pickers were the ones who were so keen on emancipation (and I don’t blame them). Most of the pickers ended up working for their old owners but for a pittance. As a side note; I was quite surprised to find out that hardly any cotton is still grown in Louisiana (and that’s probably the case for most of the South)! Apparently there is more money in other types of crops (corn, soya beans etc).

By the time we got to the civil war section of the museum we were frozen to the core (the aircond is down really low) so we ended up missing part of the museum in favour of a hot coffee and some warm barmy air outside. We headed over to the French Mkt to find just that. As it turned out, we ditched the coffee and just went straight to lunch at the Market Café. D and I shared a fried oyster and shrimp ‘po-boy’, another ‘must try’ food when you are in New Orleans. A po-boy (poor boy was what it was originally called) is a sub style sandwich and was first eaten in NO during the depression by poor people who would get handouts from the restaurants, they would use the left over bread from the day before and make them a cheap sandwich. This actually became really popular and it is now the food of choice for lunch for tourists in the French Qtr.. Ok, you’re all thinking to yourselves “fried oysters???”… Yup! You can buy fried oysters here in NO.. They are pretty awful.. D got to eat all of the fried oysters and I had the fried shrimp! To be fair, a po-boy is just a sub sandwich so I’m not sure what I was expecting.. I’ve now tasted all the famous NO food and have decided that I wouldn’t come all the way here just for the food! I might have found all of the poorest restaurants in town or it may just be that it isn’t flavourful enough for me…. The great part of the restaurant that we had lunch was the jazz band that was serenading us, they were so good that D and I hung around to hear more of their songs!

M left us and headed off to do some shopping, D and I headed out to shop in the French Mkt and to find some of the other part of New Orleans, Voodoo! The French Mkt is a nice way of describing the French Qtr’s flea market.. It was filled with junk from China, crappy souvenirs, cheap artwork and hats! (D couldn’t help himself and bought himself a panama hat—again I might add.. last time we were here in the states he bought a panama hat! J). After a stroll and D’s purchase we went to find something about voodoo.

Firstly, I’m going to say that I’m not sure I actually learnt that much about Voodoo. The reason I say this is we went to the voodoo museum (paid $5 to get in) and walked through a hodge podge of curios and trinkets that all have some sort of relation to voodoo. The gist of what I got was that it is based on the Christian faith but that somehow (I think) God and his opposite have spiritual ‘beings’ here on earth that have some sort of ability to manipulate us and events here on earth. The spirits are called zombies and are not like the zombies you see in Hollywood movies! The people who are most attuned with the spirits are the Voodoo priestesses which here in NO are called Queens. The most famous Voodoo Queen here in NO is Queen Marie Laveau. She is the lady who is famously buried in the St Louis cemetery (and whose grave is regularly defaced). From what I can gather, Hollywood has Voodoo pretty wrong, it seems to be more about getting people to fall in love with you, getting rich quick those types of things. I’m pretty sure it isn’t a Satan worshipping sect!! (I am not certain though, this museum was pretty eerie and weird-ed out!!)

Our day ended with us returning back down the river for some more Creole fare (a pretty poor version  of Jambalaya for me) and more music and drinks on Bourbon St.

Song of the Day: Louis Armstrong, When the Saints go marchin’ in