Our last day! We started off with breakfast at a place near the hotel called the Twisted Waffle. Then Terry took a Lyft to the hair salon to have her hair done, while Esmond, Lucia and I went off for some last minute shopping. First, we went to Kilwin's, a popular candy store chain with locations all over the eastern U.S. I bought some pralines, and Lucia and Esmond loaded up on gifts to take to the folks back home.
While walking through the French Quarter on our way to our next destination, I took this picture of a statue of Joan of Arc - affectionately referred to by the locals as "Joanie on a pony:"
Our next stop was the French Market:
The French Market is an open air marketplace, stretching for six blocks on the outskirts of the French Quarter. About half of the market is taken by a variety of food vendors, primarily serving Cajun and Creole food. The rest of the market is a flea market where vendors sell jewelry, souvenirs, hats, clothes, handcrafted items, etc. I found a music vendor and, in keeping with my long standing practice of bringing home music from every vacation, I bought two CDs. One was by The Meters, a New Orleans funk band, and the other was a live album by New Orleans blues pianist Professor Longhair.
Sometime during the afternoon, we spotted this street corner band, and stayed to watch them for a couple of songs:
The band consists of a clarinet, a trumpet, a banjo, an upright bass, and a steel body guitar. A sign identifies them as the "Bourbon Street Booty Shakers."
...and again, I took a picture of a couple dancing to the music:
Our flight the next day was scheduled to leave very early in the morning, so I decided to go back to the hotel and pack up as much as I could, leaving out only what we would need in the morning. I then met up with everyone for dinner, after which we went for the last tour of the day, and of the trip. Terry wasn't feeling well, and decided that she couldn't manage the walking, so we parked her in a bar, and the rest of went to catch the tour - a Voodoo (w) tour!
Our tour guide was this interesting gentleman whose name was Toast. Yes, he assured us, that is his actual birth name:
In addition to the nose ring, he also had several earrings in each ear. He commented on his resemblance to Gene Simmons of Kiss, and showed us a picture of himself dressed up as Mr. Simmons for Halloween.
Despite his appearance - or perhaps because of it - he was a very entertaining and informative tour guide. His main purpose in giving the tour, he told us, was to set the record straight about what voodoo is and is not. The Hollywood and story book image of voodoo is of black magic and evil spells. In fact, voodoo, or vodun, is nothing more than a West African religion, brought to the U.S. by slaves, and still practiced today by many Black people, and even some white people - including Toast himself.
I found this quote from Wikipedia very informative:
Vodun cosmology centers around the vodun spirits and other elements of divine essence that govern the Earth, a hierarchy that range in power from major deities governing the forces of nature and human society to the spirits of individual streams, trees, and rocks, as well as dozens of ethnic vodun, defenders of a certain clan, tribe, or nation.... Perceived similarities with Roman Catholic doctrines such as the intercession of saints and angels allowed Vodun to appear compatible with Catholicism.... Adherents also emphasize ancestor worship and hold that the spirits of the dead live side by side with the world of the living, each family of spirits having its own female priesthood, sometimes hereditary when it is from mother to blood daughter.
As Toast told us - and this was also touched on by David, our tour guide on the music tour way back on the first day - Voodoo has been heavily syncretized with Catholicism. In fact, we were told, many Voodoo practitioners are devout Catholics. As the Wikipedia article mentioned, Catholics pray to Mary and the saints, so to many adherents, it seemed to be no different than praying to the various Voodoo spirits.
And that was the end of our New Orleans adventure. The next morning, we got up early and caught our flight home.
I have one last picture, taken during our layover at the Dallas / Fort Worth airport. The airport has several terminals, with a shuttle train, called Skylink, that transports passengers between terminals:
As you can see from the picture, the train cars run on an elevated track, that runs all the way around the airport, and stops at each terminal. And looking at this picture, I have to wonder:
How the heck did they get those train cars up on that track in the first place?