Louisiana Children's Museum in New Orleans

Well, so here we are on the last day of our vacation in New Orleans.  I had promised Allison that we would go to the Louisiana Children's Museum (we try to visit any children's museum that might be available when we are traveling - we have found many nice ones).  Bruce went off and did his own sightseeing of some of his interests, and dropped us off here. 

There were a lot of exhibits that are similar to what are in other museums, of course, but there were also some that showed the unique nature of New Orleans....a little local flavor, so to speak.

There was a display on physical fitness and strength and endurance training/testing. 

Must admit one of my favorite exhibits was the Mister Rogers exhibit to which I was told by one friend that I showed my age.  I don't know if Mister Rogers had a special connection to New Orleans (I'll have to check that out) or if this was just something that they chose to include in their museum.


This is a replica of a trolley car, specific to New Orleans, and also something from the Mister Rogers show.

Here is an alphabet display, each with a little set of doors, behind which were like a shadow box exhibit. 

Some of the exhibits had special memories from the Mister Rogers television show...such as "Darling Daniel"

...and King Friday....

...and Lady Elaine (even though the poor thing's hand fell off :(

This looked like the puppet castle where King Friday and Lady Elaine lived.

Then of course a boat and a pot of crabs to cook :)

Mister Rogers' shoes...:)

...and the small trolley.....

Something unique to New Orleans would be the port and shipping industry and tourist cruise line industry.

Yes, every children's museum probably has a grocery store, but this one was the best one I've ever seen.  There was so much stuff in it, so realistic, very nice.

Outside the grocery store was a "courtyard" with a horse 'statue'.

There was a section on housing in New Orleans, and creating and drawing up plans for and building houses.

Allison really really enjoyed the restaurant for sure. She spent a lot of time playing in the restaurant.

This was very cool. There was an entire big room dedicated to bubbles...including this do-it-yourself bubble maker in which you can place yourself in a bubble. Very cool!

I only have one picture of this little girl, but she and Allison made fast friends and played together for a long time all over the museum. It's always fun being able to find and make a friend of about your own age to play with in a setting such as this.  It was a lot of fun for both of them I think. 

City Tour, Cemetaries, Ponchatrain, and Masked Beauty!

I think it was on Monday that we took another Grey Line Tour in order to see the rest of the city, that we had not seen on the Katrina tour, or in our exploration on our own.  It wasn't necessarily a great tour; so much of tours is based on one's tour guide, and the one on this one wasn't that great unfortunately.  We did see a few things on this tour.  

We had not stopped at a cemetery before.  Cemeteries in New Orleans are unique due to the fact that the city is below sea level. If they were to dig and bury folks in the ground, it would be very wet, so they build structures, mausoleums and the such, above ground.  The guide told us that plots can easily cost about $60,000, and thus they will be purchased for entire families for either their bodies or cremated remains.  There are several people in each one. 

This one, for example, I counted 36 names. It is really not that big, so I am assuming there must be cremated remains...I don't know. 

I don't know that I truly understood the story, but I think this structure above is for bodies as well.  It just looks like it is in terrible disrepair, and I think it would be considered the "low-rent district"....:(

As we continued on our tour, we also drove past Lake Ponchatrain, which we heard a lot about during the time of Katrina. 

The following picture has nothing really to do with the tour of New Orleans, but we did purchase this 'fancy' masquerade mask for Miss Allison, and she had to model it, of course, for us. :)

Louisiana Plantations

On Sunday, we went for a drive into the 'country'...outside of New Orleans to visit a plantation or two.  We had lunch reservations at a restaurant at Oak Alley Plantation.  We found this plantation, St. Josephine, first to stop at. It was actually officially closed, but we just walked around and looked at the grounds. 

I found out that in New Orleans, if it were the Creole or the Cajun, they do not have Santa Claus...they have Gaston the red-nosed alligator, who draws a boat.  I bought a picture book for us with the story of Gaston, and here is a picture of Allison in a yard display on the plantation grounds. 

We will see more in just a moment, but the oak trees in this area are just incredibly impressive.  They are anywhere from 150 to 200 years old, and we just don't see much like that that is that old around here. 

This is the small school house on the grounds. I assume, but I don't know for sure, that it was probably for the slave children.   The big pan in the front is for cooking the sugar cane.

Now this is on the grounds of Oak Alley Plantation, named such because of the lines of oak trees on both sides, thus creating a type of alley.

Allison was quite impressed with these trees as well.  The root structure is just huge and amazing. 

They are of great size, that's for sure.

Oak Alley Plantation. 

Cafe Du Monde, and a Stroll through the French Quarter

Well, so I now also know, another place that one must go to while in New Orleans is Cafe Du Monde.  This is THE place to go for beignets and coffee.  The place is really big, probably three or four times bigger than this photo here shows including an indoor seating area. There is also a to-go window.  There wasn't any seating available that we could see, and the line waiting for seating was pretty long, so we decided to get into the 'to-go' line.  This was pretty long too, but we were willing to wait.  We had no more gotten into line, when a waiter approached us and asked us if we wanted to place our to-go order with him. Why sure! :)

If you have never had a beignet, as I had never had one, it is a freshly deep fat fried dough square, still hot, and thrown into powdered sugar.  Our bag was half-full of powdered sugar for our six 'doughnuts' (basically).  It was at this time that I was especially glad to be wearing a white coat, because most everyone is dusted with white powder when they are finished, not to mention the poor floor :).  

Upon leaving Cafe Du Monde, we went walking along the streets of the French Quarter.  There are many street performers along the streets, whether playing instruments, alone or with others, or such as this man, performing a type of street mime.   It was fun watching Allison watch them. :)  This guy was really good.

And...here it is...Bourbon Street.  I need to be about 20 years younger to really appreciate Bourbon Street the way it needs to be appreciated....and without a child in tow.   In fact, it was about 5:30 in the evening, and we wanted to go into an establishment and listen to some jazz, but when we walked in, we were told that we couldn't bring Allison in.  I understand why, it's a law that no one can be in them who is under 21, but that did make it really difficult for us.  We did finally find a place that had an outdoor "garden" area, and there was a little jazz group performing live, so that worked out really well.

While we were in the garden area listening to the band, Allison worked on her postcards to her grandmas and to her class at school.

Bourbon Street was an experience...people can drink while out on the streets; there is just a loud mix of different genres of music exuding from the many different bars and drinking establishments; there are touristy trinket shops mixed in with voodoo and dark arts; and the adult shops intermingled in was something I wasn't prepared. I was glad that Allison didn't really discern some of these things, or at least she didn't mention them to me.  I cannot even imagine what it must be like during Mardi Gras.  The streets are very narrow thanks to the age of the area, predating automobiles, etc.  I cannot even fathom all the people and craziness.  


Yes, I guess I'm getting too old....