New Orleans - part 3 - Sunday 21st October

Woke up early, showered & dressed and left the hotel by 8.15am to get to the river for my Cemetery & Voodoo Tour leaving at 9am.  Got on the little bus taking us to the cemetery & met our tour guide, Mary - an elderly but sprite lady who had a good sense of humour and who gave us a gris-gris bag for protection.  We got to the cemetery - St Louis Cemetery Number One - and hopped off the bus and then started the walking part of the tour.  Mary gave us a brief history on cemeteries in the New Orleans area, showed us a couple of graves and then took us to the 'highlight' of the tour - the tomb of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen. Mary gave us a brief history of Marie and then gave us instructions on how to 'ask' for a favour, which most of us did.  We then carried on our walk through the cemetery, saw some graves of influential & noted New Orleans folk, heard stories, had a few laughs and then about 1.5 hours later we got back on the bus & went to the nearby Basin St Station Visitor Center, an old train station which has been 'recycled' for souvenir buying & getting information on what to do in New Orleans.  We then got back on the bus & were taken back to the river.  All in all it was a very interesting tour, although she didn't tell us much about voodoo, but she did say that the practice of voodoo differed from area to area and 'family' to 'family' so I suppose it would have been difficult to tell us much.

We are now entering Saint Louis Cemetery Number One.

The tomb of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.  Rather unassuming really, I thought it would be more fancy.

Plaque on the tomb.

Some of the other tombs.  It really was quite a fascinating & interesting place.

The 2 statues you can see sit atop 2 separate large tombs called Society tombs - these are tombs that society's (eg. Italian Society, Woodworkers Society, etc) would buy & allow members who couldn't afford their own tomb, or who had no family left, to be 'buried'.  Some of these tombs have been around for close to 300 years, so you can imagine how many 'people' are in there.

This is a new & empty tomb.  According to Mary it is Nicholas Cage's tomb - and the only piece of real estate he owns since he was 'done' by the IRS for tax evasion. 

One of the older tombs without a faceplate.  

The Italian Society tomb.

It is up to the families to maintain the tombs, no family=no upkeep.  In some of the cemeteries you can pay a yearly 'fee' and the city will maintain the tomb for you.

More old tombs.

The Protestant section of the cemetery.  When it was first opened St Louis Cemetery No. 1 was a Catholic cemetery and only those of the Catholic faith could be buried here.  Due to demand they made a section for non Catholics at the back of the cemetery grounds.

When the city was being redeveloped they needed some of the cemetery grounds so they  put out a notice advising of this & for you to come & claim your loved ones remains to be buried at one of the newer cemeteries.  Those that weren't claimed were dug up & put into a mass grave & then their headstones set in the concrete top of the grave.

More old tombs.

Some of the tombs were well looked after & had fancy fences around them.

The 'vaults' - this is where your loved one goes if you can't afford a tomb.  Someone went to a lot of trouble to make their loved ones final resting place stand out.

The entrance to the Basin St Station, now a visitor center.

They kept the inside just like it was in it's heyday as a train station.

And they had models of different parts of New Orleans - this is of the French Quarter.

After the tour I made my way back to the hotel and did some packing then had a restful afternoon.  About 7pm I headed out to find something to eat, went for a wander down Bourbon Street, got annoyed at the drunken people, actually got annoyed at some non-drunken people too.  I headed back to the hotel about 9pm and finished packing as I had to be at the bus station by 7.50am to catch the bus to Austin.