Friday, May 20 - On our first two tourist days, we used the shuttle and tour buses, but I knew we would not get out of this city without Joe needing to drive it himself, so that was the plan for today. I got the laundry caught up this morning, then we headed into the art district, which is just west of the French Quarter, to the New Orleans GlassWorks & PrintMaking studio. We plugged the address into Lucille and she got us next door (for some reason, the book listed 722, but the actual address was 727, but it was close enough). This was a fantastic stop -- it wasn't a tour, we actually got to just sit and watch two artists making glass creations. The two of them (husband and wife) were working on a mardi gras type cast-glass creation. It was part of a much larger art piece, so when they finished that part and put it in the cooler, they took and break and she talked to us for a few minutes and explained that she rents time from this place that has two continuous-melt furnaces. We walked through the showroom and they had some fantastic pieces there (no pictures allowed), then we went back to the workroom and watched them work on some glass leaves. It was very interesting, and amazing.
Cathy told us there was a Crystal Hamburger place on Bourbon Street (similar to White Castle hamburgers), so that was our next venture, and fortunately we even found a place to park on the street for this place. We then drove on down through Bourbon Street and parked down by the marketplace we had walked through on Wednesday so I could pick up a few items I had spotted then. The streets were full of pedestrians and street traffic through this area was heavy, but Joe managed not to hit any persons or mules. (We did follow a mule and carriage for a little while.)
Next, we decided to see if we could drive by the Superdome, since we had seen it from a distance every time we had come into the city. We followed signs and got near it, but could not get right beside it. The basketball stadium is right next to it and I got a picture of it.
So Joe says, "I wonder where this road goes," and of course we took it. Well it took us right across the Mississippi River! So much for the Superdome - we never did get back to that! We tried to get right back on the bridge to come back across, but that was a toll bridge and we didn't think we had enough change for that (it turned out it cost $1), so he didn't take that ramp. So we're driving along, on Mardi Gras Boulevard, and I mentioned that Cathy said they had gone to someplace here where you could see some of the Mardi Gras floats. Sure enough, right in front of us was the sign to Mardi Gras World. We didn't intend to go to that, but we happened to be in that lane and were forced to turn, so off we went again. We ended up right along the river bank, but we did see a few floats sitting outside.
Finally, he resorted to Lucille, so he clicked on the campground address to let her bring us home. The next thing we knew, Lucille was saying "turn right onto ferry." And sure enough, we ended up on the ferry across the Mississippi River -- that would be the "flooded, fast-moving Mississippi River." So we were first in line, not at all sure what we were doing, or even if it was running, but cars slowly started building up behind us, and we could see some boat, possibly a ferry, moving out in the river. It came and picked us up, and we drove right on just like we knew what we were doing. And it cost $1.
We actually like ferry rides, but I didn't really want to be on this river on this trip. But it was good. The river was certainly flowing rapidly. Joe said we were seeing the river walk from the river side, and I guess we were.
We watched a barge go past, and the steamship Natchez was also out here with us.
We finally got back to the the right side of the river, and headed to the campground. We drove up and down Canal Street several times today, so Joe feels like he has mastered this city. On our way home, we passed the area close to the Seventh Ward where artists had painted beautiful scenes on the support pilings under I-10. We had seen this on the bus tour, don't know if they are only in one part of the city, or if this was a different group, but they were pretty awesome. When I-10 was built, the beautiful
live oaks along Clairborne Avenue were torn down to make way for the interstate. This adversely affected property values in the neighborhood. Residents responded by painting images of these trees and other scenes on the cement pilings that replaced the trees. There are dozens of these paintings and they are very good.
As we got close to home, we tried to scope out our route for tomorrow as we head east. There are lots of freeways, bridges, and one-way streets here so we tried to educate ourselves a little so we don't have to be too creative when we are in the RV towing the car. We think we have a plan, so I'm sure Joe will leave with confidence! Florida, here we come.
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