I see dead people

Today has been a walking day. I started out bright and early walking my way to Cafe du Monde to get my morning beignets and cafe au lait. What? I gotta keep my strength up during vacation.

We ended the night having dinner at the Crazy Lobster. I "had" to have me some jambalaya and I am running out of time. In fact, I still have two more items on my "menu" I need to have before I leave. I'd better take care of it tomorrow.

While at the Crazy Lobster, BigBro, CowboyBro, and Seattle SIL and I had to wait a bit for the rest of the family to join us - so we had to have a Hurricane. This hurricane was a more authentic one in that it wasn't a slushy. It was 32oz of a rum drink with fruit-ish punch. Delish.

In the afternoon, the three mentioned above, and I went to St. Louis Cemetery 1. The oldest in New Orleans. It was "founded" in 1789 and was on the out skirts of the town originally, now in the "bad" part of town - as we later found out. The cemetery was beautiful, in a odd creepy sort of way. I was fascinated at the oldness and sad at the same time at all the crypts that had no names on them. New Orleans has a program for crypts called Perpetual Care. Meaning you can pay to have your crypt taken care of forever. You could sure tell who had paid for it and who hadn't.

A famous tomb in this cemetery is that of the famed Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. We couldn't figure out why the tomb had the "XXX" symbols on it. Google and I however found out "The thousands of X’s are largely the result of tour groups, who have paid to learn how to practice Voodoo. Their instructions always include breaking a brick off of other tombs (notice the neighboring tombs depleted of their bricks) and a combination of steps which involve spinning around three times, scratching three X’s on the tomb, knocking on it, or rubbing a foot on it or hollering at it or kicking it, etc., (everyone does it slightly, if not very, differently from everyone else) and then leaving an offering to get a wish granted." The interesting thing about voodoo is that its really a peaceful religion and not black and dark as it's been portrayed in the movies. Needless to say, I'm curious.

I started my day strolling the French Quarter in search of cool and fun balconies. I just love the Spanish influence and how ornate the wrought iron is.

Tomorrow is our last full day here. The plan now is to do the French Market again (I need to buy me a voodoo doll or two or three and some Cajun spice). After that we're heading to the Garden District to see some of the beautiful ante bellum mansions.