St. Roch area and Cemetery

I chose this history tour because it was outside the main tourist areas.  The St. Roch area is in the Marigny of New Orleans.  It is an area that is being gentrified.  So you see buildings in disrepair next to newly renovated ones.  We saw a couple of buildings that had not been repaired since Hurricane Katrina.  They still had the markings on them that had the date, along with how many dead had been found inside.  This area was not as bad as those that were closer to the lake.  As our guide explained at lot of areas here, including the cemetery, where about elbow height with water.  People could still go to the second story or the roof to escape the water. There were some areas of New Orleans that were under 15+ feet of water and there was little chance of escape. 

We started out at the St Roch Market.  It took me a while to figure out I could get just a couple of eggs over easy with a piece of toast - albeit, sour dough wheat toast with no butter!  I needed caffeine - the only thing I could find at the Market were cans of soda or glass bottles.  So Mike and I walked a couple of blocks in the heat to Roberos Grocery.  Passing by some urban art.

I was using the fish eye - which doesn't really work that great for these kind of shots.

Inside the Market.  out guide is in the foreground.

I switched to my walking around lens for the tour.  It was hard to take photos and still be able to keep up with our guide to hear about the history of the area.  This doorway caught my eye.  Those were beads decorating the railing.  The writing says,"Ring my bell"!

This was a former fire engine house, converted into a home.

Love the colors in this shotgun home.  This basically means that all the rooms are in a row.  So if you shoot a gun from the front door to the back door, you wouldn't hit anything if the door was open.

Then on to the St. Roch Cemetery I and II.  As you can see, the crypts are above ground level, This is because the water level is so high.  I don't remember the %, but a lot of New Orleans is below sea level.  So when they get a lot of rain or especially during a flood, the caskets if buried below the ground would float to above ground.

Some of these crypts are really old and damaged.  This one is not so bad.  But you can see that the structure is build of bricks and then covered over with plaster and whitewashed.

That was a close up of the damage on the tomb below.   There is an organization called "Save our Cemeteries" that will help restore a crypt when the owners have disappeared or the descendants have died out and no one remains to clean or repair it.

Those who were too poor to afford their own family crypt could join a Society and be part of a group crypt.

So you may wonder how so many people could be buried in the same crypt  The law says the  person has to be in the crypt for a year and a day.  This is so that the body can disintegrate.  On the hot humid days in New Orleans the temperature in the crypts can get extremely hot.  If someone in the family dies before the person before has been in the crypt the prescribed time they are put into a holding crypt until the time has elapsed.  Then the older casket is removed, the body is put into a bag and put into the lover section of the crypt.  And the newer casket and body are put into the crypt in their place.  The remains in the bags get smaller and smaller, so you can see how a small space can house a lot of bodies. 

 Our guide explained to us that during hurricane Karina and other storms with severe winds, sometimes the front of the crypts would be blown open and the caskets exposed.

The newer part of the cemetery.

Our last stop of the day was to the museum area.  I had originally wanted to go to the WWII museum.  But it is huge.  I heard people say it had taken them all day to get through it.  So we opted to go to the Civil War Memorial which was just across the street. 

We then called it a day and took a uber home.  We had not had Cafe De Monde beigneits yet.  There was a branch very near our airbnb.  So we drove there and had 1 portion. After Loretta's light flaky praline filled  beigneits these felt so heavy and leaden in our stomachs.  Loretta's are cooked to order, these probably were made early and just heated - still they were a disappointment after all the hype!  Then we packed up as we leave tomorrow early.  We have a swamp tour at Pearl River and then continue eastward.