New Orleans: the French District and the 9th Ward

I miss New Orleans, the French District has that aged romance that clings to you. its block after block of story-lined streets and the (Spanish) architecture has shadows and voices. i loved it the moment i set foot there and was anxious to explore every narrow alley, sit on every balcony, and discover every story of every soul that had ever lived there.

so we took the Ghost Tour

and heard about the ghost bell you can hear ringing early every Good Friday. in the 1700's the block west of the church burned down, the priest that accidently started it ran down to the church to ring the bells to warn the town, but the bells had been dutifully disassembled so as to not accidently ring on Good Friday (a very important rule, evidently), and the town burned

and about the dirge that can be heard leading to this graveyard during 'inclimate weather'. in the early 1800's the Spaniards asserted their control of New Orleans by killing a dozen of the leading Frenchmen, adding insult they left the corpses unburied, and denied final rights. after a few days a hurricane blew through, the Spaniards never saw such tumult and assuming it was the wrath of God, they let the dead be taken to the cemetary for a proper Christian burial, the pall bearer's singing dirges as they carried their dead

the next day we went back for more,

braving the thick sweltering southern summer for some bagnettes from Cafe Du Monde, fried dough dropped into a bag of powdered sugar. they were ok.

we also went next door to the 9th ward to see how she was recovering from Katrina. in the aftermath you could buy a house here for $10,000. it was looking pretty good, and a surprising amount of white people. turns out, the middle class swooped in and bought and repaired a lot of these homes, raising the value and median income level of the place.