We made it to New Orleans with little trouble, well, at least to start.  Toby was kenneled for the 12 days, as our accommodations didn’t allow pets.  The contrast with Colorado is about as stark as you can get.  Colorado is in the top two healthiest states in the nation.  High levels of physical activity, combined with an emphasis on healthy eating result in one of the longest lived populations in the nation. 

Louisiana is on the very opposite end of the spectrum.  That is not without reason.  The heat and humidity make outdoor activities less appealing.  You see a few bikes on the road, but not many, and there are few bike trails to ride them on.  The humidity and heat doesn’t let up all that much in the evening. They have a rent-a-bike program, but usage appeared to be low.  However, I think that one of the most significant factors is the food.  It was amazing!  Heavy creams and sauces, combined with very generous portions left us in a food stupor several times.  That’s not to say that all we did was eat.  We did a riverboat jazz cruise (OK, it was a dinner cruise, but some grace here, please!).

  The swamp boat tour was a highlight.  Let me tell you, there is no way that alligators are an endangered species.  They were abundant.  Our boat captain brought them in by feeding them marshmallows.  Honest!  There was also a family a racoons who were brought  out of their lair with the same enticement.  Of course, we also saw lots of winged wildlife, as well.  The National WWII museum was very well done, with a focus on the people; not just the generals, but the foot soldiers.  There were lots of war artifacts, but it never felt like a glorified gun show.  Linda and I both highly recommend a visit.  It WILL take more than a day to see the whole thing.

Travel in New Orleans was easy for us.  The Trolley/Streetcar got us to most every place we wanted to go, and the stop was 100 feet from our hotel.  We travelled across the city on it to the City Park, which is sprawling and has many attractions, but our visit wat focused on the New Orleans art museum.  It is primarily populated with loans and donations from a few very wealthy members of New Orleans high society.  Still, it was a nice museum, with a smattering of everything, from Dutch Masters to Mesoamerican pottery.  The “Immersive Van Gogh” was in New Orleans.  We missed it when it was in DC, so this was a chance to make up for it.  It was very interesting and informative and it will change you perspective about who Van Gogh was.

The plantation tour we took was interesting, and made it clear how much the plantations depended upon enslaved labor.  Once that went away, the plantations pretty much failed.  The contrast between the owners’ lifestyle and the workers’ lifestyles couldn’t have been more striking.

Of course, we did the haunted New Orleans tour (Meh).  However, the graveyard tour was very interesting without being ghoulish.  There is much to learn of New Orleans history in its graveyards.

We met our objective: we wanted do more than the flyby tour of New Orleans that we did in the past.  12 days gave us the chance to see all we wanted.  That’s not to say that we will never return (the food really is that good), but we won’t need to do it soon.

Toby survived the kennel.  Ok, he did come down with Kennel Cough (as in, he was coughing when we picked him up), and it did end up going to pneumonia, but he recovered, with the help of antibiotics. He was pretty quiet and subdued for about a week. I’m not saying that was bad…