My hosts, Julie and Larry are really sweet. Yesterday Julie and I went walking up Magazine Street to do a bit of shopping and to have lunch. Afterward she drove me around to get me oriented so I could work out where to catch buses and street cars. It's a bit hard since most of the streets curve around to follow the river, I think I'll be ok though, just have to remember the main streets. She also told me a lot of history to the city itself and the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Luckily their house missed the flooding, but there were a lot of houses and buildings that remained underwater for at least 6 weeks, there's still signs of water damage on some houses even 3 years later. Apparently about 2,000 100year old oak trees were uprooted during the storm too =(
We passed through Canal Street which is known as the Neutral Ground as it separated the French Quarter from the Americans/Irish etc way back when. We also drove around the French Quarter a bit (we're going there for a bit of bar hopping etc on Saturday so I'll get a bit of a taste of the night life). She was telling me that it's mostly set up with stores below and residential above as it was in the old days. Some of the residential places have Spanish courtyards because when the original French Quarter burnt down, the Spanish were in power at the time, so they rebuilt it with Spanish influence too.
We also drove around to look at the old houses. The one I'm staying in at the moment is at least 100 years old, it's really long, apparently called a shotgun house. The houses were built like this because back in the old days (I don't like that term really but I don't know dates so.. =p) people were taxed on how much house was facing the street. Most of the houses around here are amazing. We drove past a few houses that Anne Rice wrote about in her novels too and one that she lived in.
Today I went for a walk around Lafayette Cemetery. This was mentioned in one of Anne Rice's books too, I think Julie said it was Interview with a Vampire? I can never remember. This is one of many cemeteries with above ground tombs. I'm told that people are buried above ground here due to the water table being so unbalanced. If they were buried below ground, eventually the caskets would pop right back up out of the ground. Many of the tombs are family ones, today I saw a few with about 9 people etched onto it! Apparently the older ones were amazing, families having statues made of the deceased, even the poorer families would scrape together the money to do so. They even have society tombs, I saw one that hosted firefighters. These were usually to host for people who didn't have family around or who hadn't a tomb to rest in. I also noticed along the walls of Lafayette there were single memorials too, so I guess if you didn't have a family tomb you could buy a slot in the wall?
After that I caught a street car up to Canal Street and down to the river front. Walked around there for a little while then went into the Aquarium (mostly to avoid the incoming storm). It was pretty cool! I've decided that I enjoy taking photos of the facial expressions of fish cause they're way awesome. Especially Stingray, they always look happy. Too bad my camera battery died halfway through and I missed out on a lot of cool shots, like seahorses and giant white aligators! The exibits were cool, it was laid out as different water habitats. Carribean, Amazon, Mississpi, then had extra bits with Penguins and Otters and Seahorses and Frogs and Jellyfish. The seahorses were sneaky, they had lots of different types. A couple of them took me a while to find due to them being so well camoflaged. One was long and had things on them that looked like leaves so it blended into the plants really well! I had to cheat and look at the display picture to see what I was looking for =(
Didn't do much after the Aquarium. Was still a bit wet so started making my way back to the house and got stopped by these 3 guys who were hanging out on the corner with the cemetery on it. They were like
"excuse me, we were wondering if you could help us out with something"
(/prepare for death scene)
"so we're from (such and such) college and we need to shoot a short film and we were wondering if you could act in this shot for us"
(...uhh)
"see this guy is gonna be passed out drunk over there and all we want you to do it maybe kick him a bit and mug him and then walk off"
(I don't think I look like the mugging type..)
"exactly!"
(Sigh, ok I guess we can give it a go)
So grats to me. I'm now in some random college short film mugging some dude and walking off with his camera and about $10 cash.
wtf.
Ok that's all for today, am being taken out to dinner somewhere famous and exciting and good, and I don't remember what it's called.
xxo
