Day Four: Dallas - New Orleans (Part Two)

After witnessing an undercover sting, we were both feeling a little apprehensive about our decision to go to New Orleans. Luckily, we ventured off Bourbon Street and found a place offering ghost tours! Um, hell yeah I want a ghost tour!!! I am obsessed with ghosts and hauntings and spooky stories!

We were waiting outside of the shop for the tour guide to show up, and talked to these really nice homeless people. I know, we are weirdos, but they were playing music and they were so nice. When anyone would walk by with a musical instrument, they'd flag them down and they'd come over and play a song with them. It was definitely entertaining to watch them sing and talk amongst each other. One of them had a banjo with him, and I could tell it had a signature on it, I asked him who signed his banjo and he said the guy from RoboCop did. I thought that was hilarious, I wouldn't know who that guy was if he was standing in front of me.

We stood and watched them sing for a while, and one kid who they harassed until he came over with his guitar, played and he sang beautifully. He was singing a folk song, and folk music is probably my favorite, so it was great entertainment!

When our tour guide showed up, we were excited to get started! Our tour guide was a little guy from Biloxi, Mississippi, and his accent was so bad that we had to devote all of our attention to him just to follow his stories. Don't get me wrong, he was good, it was just hard for us to understand. Another couple on the tour was from Tennessee and they didn't seem to have a problem understanding him. Must have just been us Californians!

We saw SO many buildings and heard so many stories that it would take me forever to list them. But I did write notes on all the haunted locations we went to, so I'll screenshot it, and it will be on the bottom of this post so you can google them yourself and read about them if you're into that kind of thing too!

I'll briefly tell you about two of the locations we went to. We went last night, but I went back today for better pictures so it will be night and day pictures.

LaLaurie Mansion: You NEED to google this place. It's considered to be the most haunted house in all of New Orleans. It no longer is the same LaLaurie mansion since it burned down, but it's the same property. Actually, this is the house that Nicolas Cage owned and refused to sleep in...

The LaLauries were sick people. The husband was a doctor and there were rumors that they did experiments on slaves. For instance, our guide told us they broke all the bones in one slave and reset them at weird angles so that she crawled like a spider. (I'm definitely going to have nightmares for weeks picturing that.) Anyways, that's only a quarter of the stuff these sick bastards did. Now people say they can hear the slaves speaking a language from the "underworld." But google that mansion, it's creepy looking, and supposedly nothing but bad has ever come to anyone who has ever lived there. Look at Nic Cage, he's a hot mess!

Saint Louis Cathedral: On Good Friday a lonnggggg time ago someone started a fire in their home and ran to the cathedral to ring the bell as a warning. I guess on Good Friday they don't ring bells at churches, so everyone came out of their homes to see what was happening since the bells were ringing. The story is that some people hear the bell ringing on Good Friday and it's the ghost of the man that started the fire ringing it. The story was so-so, but that cathedral is gorgeous. Be sure to look at the pictures below, the back of the church is spooky with that statue lit up on the church!

We left earlier this morning and I was bummed that I didn't get to go into one cemetery. I love cemeteries, I could get a Starbucks and a good book and sit in one all day. I find them comforting and peaceful, I know, I am a weirdo. Anyways, there are several Saint Louis cemeteries, and when we were leaving the French Quarter, we saw one and I made Guido pull across 3 lanes of traffic to see it. It was definitely not in the nicest of areas, and seeing how we have all of our stuff in the jeep, he didn't want to leave our car on the street. (Yes, it was THAT sketchy!) So I told him to stay in the car, grabbed my camera and hopped out and ran across the street.

I know my mom and my family is probably shaking their heads right now, but there were plenty of tourists milling around as well so I wasn't scared. I am so glad that I went into that cemetery. This cemetery is just like one I've been to in Puerto Rico, they're all above ground because of the sea level, this was was very dilapidated, and I hate seeing the neat statues missing. I go to cemeteries enough to realize when a statue has been snatched for someone's garden, or who knows why people steal from a cemetery! I wish we had more time in NO, because I would have taken every cemetery tour possible, it was THAT neat! In the pictures below, the graves with the XXX on them are the voodoo graves. If you knock three times, write XXX on the grave, and then knock three times again, and leave a token, they will grant you a wish. So neat!!!

Enjoy the pictures!! I went a little picture crazy! Ohhhhh, the one house that I am standing in front of that's dark is Brad Pitt/Angelina's House.

Day Four: Dallas - New Orleans (Part One)

I am going to warn you, this will be a LONG post...It will have to be 2 parts because of all the crap that happened in New Orleans.

Yesterday we drove from Dallas to New Orleans and it was quite a little trip. Luckily, I think it was only 8 hours so it went by pretty fast, so I wasn't getting cabin fever being in the car like I am sure I'll have today!

We didn't see much on our drive. Louisiana is VERY southern, I don't think we did see a metropolitan city until we arrived in New Orleans. At one point when we were fairly close to NO, I pointed out to my husband all these trailers on this huge empty lot. I am mad now that I didn't stop and take a picture because it was unbelievable how many there were. There were at least 1,000 Fleetwood trailers, one after another, the same one over and over and they were used and parked so close together, and I couldn't figure out what the heck they were. I finally realized halfway through passing them that they were the FEMA trailers from Hurricane Katrina! There were SO many of them and they were tiny. I cannot believe people lived in these trailers. So I started googling the area we were in to confirm it, and we were right. It was basically a FEMA trailer boneyard. I also found a ton of articles from 2011 stating that even 5 years after Katrina, people were still living in them! I couldn't believe it! I also found that the government sold off some of the used trailers when people moved out of them, after seeing the condition they were in, I wouldn't have one of those trailers if they were given to me. I stayed in a trailer while camping for 4 days with 5 people, and it was hard to keep that thing clean, I can't imagine living in one for 5 years!!!!

We were eager to get to New Orleans because neither of us had ever been and I kept thinking it was going to be like Vegas since they don't have an open container law on the streets. To me, it was like the gas lamp of San Diego mixed with the homeless and street performers of Hollywood and the alcohol of Vegas. I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't anywhere close to anything I had in my mind. It was worse.

We arrived at about 5ish, and immediately we checked into our hotel, the Saint Marie, and got changed and left for Bourbon Street. Our hotel was about 1 block from BS, because I had read reviews that said that you don't want to actually stay on BS if you want to sleep! And I NEEDED sleep at this point in our trip. So we headed for BS to see what was going on, and I was shocked!!!! This was nothing like Vegas since it's so condensed, there was alcohol everywhere! I've never seen so much alcohol in my life, and they have tons of promoters trying to get everyone in their bars or more likely, their strip clubs. They have all these young girls standing out in the streets in their thongs and bras shouting at guys to come in. It was crazy for me to see, especially since I was with my husband, I didn't think they'd be yelling at him to come in, but they sure were! They were even talking shit on my body type to get him to come in, and see "real women." I didn't say anything, which is huge for me because I am a crazy loud mouth, but I just knew you don't mouth off to people down there. I just kept on walking...I can't help it I'm a petite person, but at least I don't have the clap! Crazy bitches!

We were getting a little hungry, so we went and got some beignets at Cafe Beignet. They were pretty good, for some reason I thought they would have a filling in them, but they didn't, they tasted like a funnel cake! Seriously, just like a funnel cake, and I love funnel cake!

We started just walking up and down Bourbon Street because there was so much to see. All the hotels, bars, clubs, strip joints, everything! We walked past some street performers that were neat and we stopped to watch these four teenaged kids tap dance. They were so young and Guido even mentioned that it was awfully late for them to be out on a Monday night, because I think they looked maybe 14/15? So, we are watching them tap dance and so were a few people because they were good! All the sudden, these five people grab these kids and throw them up against the wall. I saw this huge guy hold this poor kid down, and I started shouting for my husband because I thought they were getting robbed or something! I didn't know what was going on. Then these people started shouting "Undercover police!" and pulled their badges out of their shirts. We stood their shocked as they arrested these three kids (one took off running) and we were appalled. Don't get me wrong, if they were being investigated by undercover officers, I'm sure they did something wrong, it just really made me sad because they were so young. I'm sure they're out performing for money because they're families are poor. It just broke my heart to see their faces when they were getting arrested. It was like they just knew they'd were screwed.

When we saw those kids get arrested,, it really upset me. I felt horrible, but I was glad to stumble into a shop and find a ghost tour! I'll blog about that in the next post!

Enjoy the pictures! I don't know why when I blog on my phone I can't arrange the pictures in the order I want them too, so I apologize for that!