USA Holiday 3, October 07 (Breesy Beats)

New Orleans is almost deserted during the day, on a weekend at least. Stores don't seem to open until 10am or 11am either. Went past Jackson Square which has this pretty cool cathedral and a horse statue in the middle. Since this is in the French Quarter of New Orleans there is also a French Market, it was just selling the usual market stuff and was not particularly French themed.

St. Louis Cathedral.

Something near Jackson Square.

A market in French Quarter, not a French market.

Back near Jackson Square there was a huge queue lined up to get a seat at Cafe du Monde, which seemed pretty stupid when it just looked like a regular cafe. Supposedly they have famous beignets, which is some sort of pastry a bit like a donut perhaps, but they also sell the mix for it in all of the stores so you could probably just make your own imitation easily enough.

Across the street was the moon walk which sounded interesting, but was not related to the Apollo 11 expedition or Michael Jackson. It is just a boardwalk named after some mayor whose first name was Moon if you can believe that. However you do get a good view of the mighty Mississippi and all of the ships travelling down it. It's just not as good as the boardwalk at Atlantic City (before the hurricane), or the one from Jersey Shore seasons one, three, five and six (also before the hurricane).

The rest of Jackson Square from the boardwalk.

The bridge out of town.

Took a quick trip across to Algiers Point on the ferry and back again, then went to a "po-boys" place for lunch. Basically, po-boy is short for poor boy, and they serve a selection of (relatively) cheap sandwiches in a baguette sub with a whole range of options for the fillings. The place we went to was packed out, so the food was not really worth the wait, and I'm not sure fries in a sandwich really worked...

I'm on a boat.

Went up to check out Louis Armstrong Park next, the guy has his own airport, park and tennis stadium, and maybe more. There wasn't a whole lot to see there but it seemed ok, then went through the shops at Riverwalk Marketplace. On the way out there was another large group of Venezulean people with some food stands set up on the street, but I never found out why there was so many of them.

LA Park.

LA Park again.

Lafayette Square.

Grabbed a ride on the St. Charles Streetcar to the end of it's route and then back again. The whole way along St. Charles Avenue is full of fantastic old two-storey houses. The streetcar tracks which run down the middle of the street also serves as a perfect grass running track, a lot of people were making use of it, but unfortunately you still need to watch out for the cars crossing the tracks coming out of the adjacent streets. Another curious thing I noticed along the trip is that Loyola University and Tulane University are literally right next to each other, and they both appear to be very small. Why not just have one bigger university?

Some expensive gated community on St. Charles Avenue.

Tulane University.

Just enough time for the camera to save, now it's Loyola University.

People jumping off the streetcar and on to the bus.

The streetcar line / running track.

In the evening it was off to the Mercedes Benz Superdome to watch the New Orleans Saints vs. San Diego Chargers. Not surprisingly the Saints were 0-4 going in to the game since all of their coaches have been banned for the season. In the first half Drew Brees set a new NFL record by scoring at least one touchdown in 48 straight games, a record that has set 50 years ago. The game was another high scoring one with the Saints taking the lead in the fourth quarter to win 31-24. The only downside of the game was some people nearby with painfully high pitched screaming whenever the visiting team was on the field. I really needed to bring earplugs to the game.

The people without tickets for the game I think, there's a lot of them.

Shiny. Has a cool lighting effect at night (at 6am at least).

End Zone seating.

National Anthem I suppose (10 times better than the Australian one).

Drew Brees breaks the quarterback record.

Saints win.