We started the day by walking up the road to Saint Louis No. 1 cemetery which is the oldest and most famous cemetery in New Orleans. It was opened in 1789 to replace the city’s oldest burial ground which had been by St Peters. It is one block outside the boarder of the French Quarter, the initial city and has been continuously used since its foundation, apparently there was a burial last month. You can only go in as part of a tour but as we had arrived for the 9:30 one in true American style there were only a couple of other people there and they were both from Scotland. We went into the cemetery and our first stop was by the wall vaults which are also known as the Oven vaults, as most of the tombs in the cemetery are family plots there are multiple bodies in each one, once someone has been buried you are not allowed to open the tomb again for a year and a day, as this is the case there is a possibility that someone else in the family may die in that time so the wall tombs are rented out until the person can be buried in their family tomb. These tombs stack gravesites, filing cabinet style, one above the other. Although originally intended to be temporary resting places it is believed that not all families collected their relatives and when the vault needed to be reused they just pushed the remains to one side. We walked round the graves, stopping for a couple that were either particularly impressive. The first one we looked at was the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, She was born in 1801 in the French quarter to a Haitian mother and white father. She became a prominent Voodoo practitioner which is actually normally a healer and she was known for her benevolence when she nursed people who suffered during the many Yellow Fever outbreaks. Also in the cemetery is the tomb for Homer Plessy, believed to be the first civil rights activist when in June 1892 he challenged the segregation laws when he refused to disembark from a “whites only” train car near Press Street. He was convicted of breaking the law and the case went to the Supreme Court, in 1896 the “separate but equal” mandate was ruled constitutional thus starting all the years of segregation and oppression. There are a few society tombs which were created to house the remains of those that couldn’t afford a vault for themselves for example there is one for Italians, Portuguese and another or Spanish. Possibly the strangest vault is that belonging to Nicolas Cage (the actor) who is not dead yet. It is in the shape of a pyramid although only he knows why and bears the inscription “Omnia Ab UNO” All from One. Interestingly he once had two houses in New Orleans but they have been repossessed by the state due to non-payment of taxes but they can’t reprocess the vault which could have helped pay off the debt as it is said it will cost $40,000 for a small plot. We walked round more of the cemetery looking at some of the impressive vaults then we walked back to the bus stop to get onto the hop on hop off bus. We took this to the Garden district, this was once a plantation called Livaudais and in those days because the town was Catholic married couples could separate but never divorce, this meant that assuming they had enough money they could live separate lives but not divorce, however, the woman that lived there want to divorce her husband and filed papers which somehow her husband didn’t receive, she wanted all the money and would leave her husband with the plantation which at least would mean that he could rebuild his worth, but the judge was angry that her husband didn’t turn up for hearing so gave the plantation to her and gave him the money. Because she didn’t want the plantation she sold it to the first person that was willing to buy it which turned out to be a property developer who wanted to create an upper class area where the plantation owners could come for the season. He parcelled the land up into one block lots which could be subdivided and some wonderful houses were built here. It is now home to the very rich and a few famous people. It is home to Sandra Bullock and John Goodman as well as the parents of Payton and Eli Manning who both play American football. By the time we had finished walking round it was lunchtime and so we got back on the bus and went to Magazine Street where there are a lot of restaurants. We picked a bar which did wonderful food, it was Taco Tuesday so we got Creole food in a taco and it was very tasty. By the time we had finished and got the bus back to the French Quarter to return to the hotel to relax and confirm what we want to do on our last day in New Orleans tomorrow.
