New Orleans – of joy and sorrow in the Garden District

Today, I’m going to take you on your third walk through New Orleans’ diverse urban landscape. After falling in love with the pretty iron balcony creations in the French Quarter and forgetting about the time in the CBD/Warehouse District because of all the museums, today it gets spooky and stately in the Garden District.

The Garden District begins to the southwest, bordering the Warehouse District, and is characterized by its many beautiful 19th-century mansions. The quickest way to get to this part of the city is to take one of the nostalgic streetcars that run along St. Charles Avenue.

Since this district lives from its stories and anecdotes, we signed up relatively spontaneously and for the first time ever with “Free Tours by Foot” for a 2-hour Garden District tour. The offer of Free Tours by Foot is already available in numerous cities and has become established. The concept is exciting in that only freelance tour guides are engaged, and no fixed price is charged. At the end of the tour, it is up to each participant to decide whether and how much they want to pay.

Our tour started at Lafayette Cementary No. 1, the oldest city cemetery in New Orleans. Our guide, who grew up in the neighborhood, told us that as a child he played happily here between a jumble of skeleton parts lying around. What an idyllic childhood. Today, the skeletons have been cleared away, but the stories and myths are still tangibly present.

After hearing all the horror stories of New Orleans, the tour took us on a neighborhood discovery trip across the Garden District. With the many spacious gardens and the spacious, stylish villa buildings, it is a very respectable quarter, in which many famous people lived and still live. By the way, Sandra Bullock’s house is also among my snapshots. If you find out which one it is, I’ll send you a handwritten postcard from my next city trip – so go ahead, try :).

A good opportunity to meet Sandra Bullock in the garden is during the Super Bowl. At least that’s what our guide told us, who, by the way, was a banker in his “former” life.

The two-hour tour went by in no time and we learned a lot of off-topic knowledge in addition to the historical details, especially about the conditions within the neighborhood during Hurricane Katrina. In the end, the tour was worth 10 dollars per person. If I had had more change with me, buying one of these beautiful houses would have been worth considering. I mean, how else do you become Sandra Bullock’s neighbor?

In this sense: