583. New Orleans, Orleans Parish (LA62)

Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify.  I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), welcome to the Big Easy! It turns out that New Orleans is a combined city/parish government, just like Denver, so the center of power would be City Hall. To be honest, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the courthouse equivalent would be but I didn’t know the political layout or anything. In the end, I ended up stopping a police officer and asked. I figured that he would know far better than I possibly could. The funny thing is that the building doesn’t even seem that special. There is nothing to it other than the big letters that spell out “City Hall.” I have to admit that of all the cities I might have expected something like this from, this was not the one. As you can imagine, I expected something spectacular, built in the reign of the Sun King or something. But that was not to be. That being said, the Denver connection was not quite finished.

Welcome to the New Orleans Jazz Museum. It used to have another name, though. In another time, this was the New Orleans Mint. It was closed so I didn’t get a chance to go in. I would have gone for both the mint and jazz exhibits in a heartbeat. That’s alright. To get here, of course, I had to take a stroll…

…through the world famous French Quarter. I walked its streets with a daquiri and a slice, dodging the throngs walking to and fro, passing the bars and the shops. I had a plan. I wanted to get a certain cache, a very special one. I’ve seen many graves up to this point, and I wanted to add one more to the tally. I wanted to visit the Virtual at the tomb of Marie Laveau. It would have actually been two graves because Homer Plessy of Plessy v. Ferguson fame is also there. Unfortunately, it required scheduling an appointment I did not know to make. And scoping out the cemetery, my occasionally hinted Plan B, which involved bolt cutters, twenty bucks, and a homeless person making a convenient opening for me, turned out to be ill advised, too. The high walls surrounding the cemetery and the stoutness of the gate made that unlikely at the best of times. So I just had to find something else to fit the bill. Would I find one in the Crescent City? There were far more back in Gretna, but I somehow managed…

I give you Joan of Arc. She towered over the Quarter and was the answer to my conundrum (for certain values of conundrum). With her identity and the surrounding features I was able to make the claim.

While I was at it, I grabbed another Virtual in the area. This one was a location in the Bond movie Live And Let Die. I photographed my presence for another claim and then spent a little time soaking in the city.

But all good things must end. As the sun descended in the sky, I headed back to LaPlace and my hotel room. When I rose the next morning, I would begin the long trip home, the last two parishes in Louisiana on the way. With the dawn, I began the long drive west and first stopped in…