Trolley Cars, The Confederacy, and Katrina

New Orleans does offer several trolley lines through its public transportation system.  They are pretty user friendly, especially during the daytime hours, as they run about every 15 minutes or so; they cost $1.25 per ride, but you can buy day passes or three-day passes.  They probably also have something for the locals, but I don't know that for sure.  This line ran right past the hotel.  Allison got a kick out of it.  We rode it a few times, especially before Saturday night; however, we were planning to ride it back from the French Quarter -- it is to run like every 30 minutes.  Well, we had just missed one...inconvenient, but okay.  But, instead of 30 minutes, it was more like 60 minutes...somehow it had gotten held up, and there were enough people waiting at the stop to fill 2 trolleys...oh look, here comes a 2nd trolley! :)   So, this annoyed B enough that we haven't been back on.....:)

 While in the South we must study the Confederacy, right?  It was a nice little museum dedicated to the Confederates...there were a lot of artifacts, flags, uniforms, items used by soldiers, etc.,and lots of guns...not big into guns, but that's a big part of the civil war, huh....

 Grey Line Tours are always something that we try to do when we are in a big city.  Some are usually better than of others, of course, and it normally depends on the quality of the tour guide....how well they present their city obviously.   We took the "Katrina" Tour, and all the Grey Line tours started from the lighthouse pictured below.  The tour guide was a lady who had lived through the experience, actually was an evacuation bus driver, and came back and took more people out of the city; had her own home experience damage as well as family members, and I believe a relative of hers even may have died, although I think it sounded like of a heart attack or something like that.  She had passion toward this subject, and she was a very very good guide.  I enjoyed her tour very much.  Unfortunately, I was not able to really get any good photographs representing any damage still visible today.  Actually that is probably a very good sign though. It's been five years, and there are a lot of vacant homes still but it is not a city of shambles as one might expect, at least not the parts we were shown.  It is a city that is trying to get back on its feet.  

 This was either in St. Bernard's Parish or the 9th Ward, I don't remember which; but it is a monument/sculpture built to represent what happened with Katrina, the blue showing the water, and the reddish depicting the homes.