Welcome to Nola!

Among the many distinctive tourist meccas I have ignored through my youth and middle age is New Orleans.  I finallly got here at age 62, in a rainstorm, two days ago.  That night there was a crackling thunderstorm...over an inch of rain in an hour...and dawn Saturday broke to fog.  It gave the French Quarter a soft, mysterious effect.  Blow up the pix for better detail.

Andrew Jackson rides high in the morning mist.  The statue dates from 1848, three years after Old Hickory died.  He's still revered for thrashing the British in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.  Even late in the 19th century the battle would not have taken place...the US and England had signed a treaty in Europe a few weeks earlier ending the War of 1812, but word had not gotten back to Nola.  No telegraph or undersea cable, much less more modern forms of communication.

This is Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, now a tavern.  Dating from 1772, the building was a headquarters for Jean Lafitte and his brother's business enterprises.  Jean Lafitte was indeed an enterprising sort, of a type not unknown today...he was a pirate, privateer, entrepreneur, military man, smuggler, and spy.  Quite a versatile fellow!

This is the French Market, next to the river.  You can obtain almost any type of food or goods here.  This weekend there was also a food fair, where you could get all sorts of goodies and drinks.  I got fried chicken and Abita beer.  BTW the open container law in Nola is simply that you can't carry your drink around town in a glass container...plastic or paper is fine.  It's quite liberating to stroll around town quaffing a beer.

The Cabildo, a stately hall built by the Spaniards in the 1790s when they controlled New Orleans.  This was where the paperwork was signed that first transferred Nola from Spain to France in 1803...when he was stomping on Spain...and later that year to the US after Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from Napoleon.

St Louis Cathedral, fronting Jackson Square.  The church was built in 1794 and extensively remodeled in 1850-51.  Pope John Paul II visited in 1989.

Now I'm in the Garden District, the upscale part of town, about two miles SW of the French Quarter.  This typical fine home is Archie Manning's crib.  He and his wife Olivia raised three boys...Cooper, Eli, and Peyton.  All of excellent character and like their dad, uncommon athletic ability.  Cooper's career was cut short by injury in his late teens, but the other two turned out well.  Younger folks don't remember, but Archie himself was an excellent QB who had a long career...I reckon he was about as good as Eli.  But unlike his sons, he never played on contending teams.  He spent most of his career with the Saints when they were Baaaad. 

The Garden District is lush with flowers and huge old oak trees, which have gnarled the sidewalks.

This mansion was occupied by Union forces during the Civil War.  Later, Confederate president Jefferson Davis died here in 1883.

An exceptionally fine Garden home.

Commander's Palace, a New Orleans landmark since 1880.

Lafayette Cemetery, across the street from Commander's Palace.  Like other local graveyards, most graves are above ground due to the low elevation of the city and the dampness of the climate.  Actually the Garden District is 5-15 feet above sea level, but much of the city is below sea level and the ground tends to liquefy.  This part of town was not seriously damaged by Katrina due to its favorable elevation.

The St Charles streetcar.  Best way to travel from the Quarter to the Garden District.

As an old sailor, I enjoy getting out on the water.  So I took a steamboat cruise this afternoon.  We cruised up and down the Mississippi, listening to a nice jazz band and sipping libations.  It was scenic and relaxing.  Here's downtown Nola with a tug.

The Domino Sugar company.  New Orleans has long been a sugar manufacturing center...thus the Sugar Bowl.  This factory looks quite ramshackle from the boat...at first I even wondered whether it was abandoned.  But absolutely not...it refines and ships huge quantities of sugar daily, from little packets for your coffee to 500 pound bags.

A petrochemical plant.  Louisiana is, as the narrator said, an industrial state.  There are a lot of these plants.  Their emissions are an issue...there are many of these facilities on the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a stretch of river known as Cancer Alley.

Just a curiosity...this ring was caused by our steamboat doing a U-turn.

Another steamboat...the Creole Queen.

When docking, the captain of the Natchez leaves the bridge and stands on this platform on the bow, issuing instructions to the crew through a megaphone.  Obviously a traditional practice that still works nicely.

Here's our steamboat, the Natchez.  It's about 40 years old.

As we docked, the Norwegian Jewel set sail for the open gulf.  Looks like the taggers got it!

Galveston

I went to the visitors center in Galveston this morning and got recommendations-and maps-for two tours in the historic district...Victorian homes, and tree trunks turned into wood sculptures in the same neighborhood.  This worked well.  This Great Dane is named Hunter, and he's the pet of the owners of the fine Victorian in the background.

A fine Victorian, built in 1882 for one of the town's prominent doctors.  Blow the pics up for better detail...at this scale there are distortions in some of the pictures.  I haven't a clue as to why.

Had to shoot this one...tree trunk morphed into a guitar.  While most of the sculptures were done by master carvers, the homeowner did this one.

This home is named Maison des Fleurs...house of the flowers.  It was built in 1894 and thus survived the 1900 hurricane, as did most of the other homes in this post.  They are on the bay side of town, a mile or so from the open gulf.

Toad stylin'.  Looks like she's been to Mardi Gras!

Another fine home.  Tons of fancy woodwork.

After the 1900 hurricane, most of the city was raised about ten feet with dredged sand, and a 17 foot seawall was constructed.  Several storms have hit Galveston since, and damage and especially casualties have been much less...the 1900 storm killed about 8000 people, the greatest natural disaster in US history.  Still, storm surges cause damage.  This plaque is on a house about 6 blocks from the bay, a mile from the open gulf.  It's 9 1/2 steps up from the street, and only 1 1/2 steps from the front porch.

Toto and the Tin Man were carved in the yard of this house because King Vidor, one of the directors of the original 1930s movie The Wizard of Oz, was born in the house in the background.

Old Victorians merge with modern architecture.

Nestled among the Victorian mansions are these two shotgun houses.  Don't know if they survived the 1900 hurricane...many such dwellings were obliterated in New Orleans by hurricane Katrina in 2005.

A yellow lab.

This sculpture incorporates quite a bit of an old oak tree to depict many birds native to the Galveston area.

Bishops Palace, built circa 1890.  This home is open for tours.

Sacred Heart Catholic Church.  While the stone Bishops Palace survived the great hurricane of 1900, the original church across the street was trashed.  This replacement was built in 1903, incorporating a wide variety of styles.  Moorish and Gothic predominate.

A stately downtown building dating from 1878.

The Strand.  This is the main street of downtown Galveston.  Once a haven for bankers and businessmen, it's full of touron shops today.

Polar bears in Galveston?? You betcha!

Stormy seas at the Galveston Pleasure Pier.  It survived Ike in 2008 but you have to figure a Sandy-type storm might leave the roller coaster out to sea, as happened to one in New Jersey.

Texas History, Old and New

Had an interesting day yesterday.  I started out by touring the Alamo in San Antonio.  This is where about 200 Texans...from many states and several foreign countries...fought 1500 Mexicans under Santa Anna (a devious fellow who had a long and checkered career in Mexican politics).  The Alamo defenders all died, except for William Travis' slave, Joe.  A number of noncombatants also survived.  The battle inspired Texan resistance and the following month, April 1836, Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto, insuring Texan independence.  Santa Anna was captured the following day, trying to impersonate a

 common soldier. 

I moved on to the LBJ National Historical Park near Johnson City, between Fredericksburg and Austin.  Johnson began his schooling at the age of four in this one room schoolhouse.  That was in 1912; over fifty years later, LBJ signed a big education bill at this spot, with his former teacher on hand.

The graves of Lyndon and Lady Bird.  She survived him by 34 years.  In 2006, I visited another house down the road where LBJ spent some of his early years; the main ranch here was not fully open to the public then because Lady Bird still lived there.  She lived til 2007, dying at 94.  This is the family cemetery on the ranch, in a pleasant oak grove.

A Hereford bull, a descendant of one of LBJ's prize bulls.  LBJ loved the ranch; he spent about a quarter of his presidency here.  He took an active interest in the ranch, but no, he didn't shovel steer shit or shoe the horses...such tasks were left to the ranch hands.

LBJ used this jet as Air Force 1 during his presidency.  He had a 6300 foot runway built on the ranch.  It replaced a dirt strip built while he was a senator.  He loved to do politics here and had many visitors and cut many deals on the ranch.  For some reason, many of these small pix are coming out blurry...blow them up by clicking on them and you'll get a larger and clearer image.

LBJ liked Lincoln Continentals with suicide doors, and had a fleet of them at the ranch.  In the background is an amphibious car that he used with guests from time to time.

There are many fine oak trees on the ranch.  This one is called the Cabinet Oak...right next to the main house.  LBJ used to assemble his cabinet for meetings here, under this tree.  Many a discouraging word about Vietnam was undoubtedly said here.  I toured the house...couldn't take pix inside, but it was familiar to me...furnishings straight out of the 1960s and 70s.   Phones in every room...LBJ wanted to stay connected but obviously had no cell phones, so he had 72 lines in the house.  Many speaker phones.  He had a phone built into the dining table next to his chair, and another one next to the toilet in his bathroom.  There were also TVs in every room.  Two rooms had three televisions side by side...one for each network...and that's all there was!  No cable, no Fox.  Just ABC, NBC, CBS.

I've now moved on to Austin.  It has a dazzling modern skyline, many buildings having popped up just since my previous visit in 2006.

Skullers on the Colorado River at dusk, joining the throngs of people waiting for the evening bat flyoff.,

And there they go!  Every night at dusk in spring and summer, thousands of bats fly out from under the Commerce Avenue bridge in search of tasty insects. Bats are our friends...each eats over a thousand mosquitoes a night!  Late March is early in the bat season, so the numbers are only in the thousands...by summer well over half a million of the critters sortie every evening.

Austin is a hip, happenin' scene.  Lots of music, clubs, and barbecue. It's a cool city.

The Texas state capitol.

One of the new skyscrapers with nocturnal illumination.

It's wildflower season in Tejas.  The medians and sides of many highways are very colorful in early spring.  Here a dense field of bluebonnets merge with pretty red flowers whose name I don't know.

I have reached Galveston, on the Gulf of Mexico.  A strong onshore southeast wind has the ol' Gulf roiling.  Galveston is famous for its fine Victorian homes.  Like San Francisco, a catastrophe wiped many of them out...in this case the hurricane of 1900.  These are on the bay side of town, a long way from the ocean.  This particular home has a nice widow's walk on top.

A particularly spiffy place across the street from the widow's walk home.  Tomorrow I will cruise the historic district and take more pix.