So my sister and crew got in last night. Crew = Chrissy, Conner, Maci, and Wyatt. I was up early and decided to go to the Stanley for breakfast. (First hike of the day across the French Quarter) This is right on Jackson Square. Now I’ve been here before but didn’t remember the prices being this high. However, the food was still excellent.

As I was walking my sister calls and they are on their way but going to try and find someplace quick for breakfast. Their hotel didn’t have a continental breakfast like she’s used to. I told her I didn’t think there would be many options in the French Quarter to just pick something up. They ended up getting to the tourist meetup point without eating.

The first tour of the day was of Saint Louis Cemetery #1. Now when I had been here previously you could just wander around as you pleased. However, in the past two years they have implemented a policy where you must be with a tour guide in order to tour the cemetery. They have also gone to great lengths to clean up the graves inside and it’s not as run down as it used to be. You can see that clearly on Marie Laveau’s tomb.

As you can see on Marie Laveau’s tomb above all the Voodoo XXX’s have been painted over. In the past when I’ve seen this crypt it was almost black with X’s. 

This is Nicholas Cage’s crypt.

Now after almost a two hour tour of a cemetery everyone was still in pretty good spirits. The youngest ones were well behaved. We took the Tour bus back to the river. Then looking for someplace to eat I took them for Po Boy’s at Johnny Po-Boy’s.

My nephew Wyatt loved it. We then walked down Royal street to the Blue Dog Gallery.

We then walked up to Canal street and caught the St. Charles line up to where we could walk to the World War II museum. We walked past the Civil war museum but since we had heard so much about the WW II museum we skipped it.

The museum was packed. Conner went around and tried to collect all the artifacts from the kiosks on his card key. I think he was way ahead of all the rest of us. It’s hard to believe the sacrifice that the greatest generation made so that we could have the life we do today. Going through this museum you see how close we were as a country to losing. Things today could be so much different.

After all the walking that we had done so far everyone was a little tired. We took a taxi back to the French quarter and Wyatt and I hiked back to the trailer for a nap before we met up on our evening Ghost tour expedition.

We met at Reverend Zombie’s house of Voodoo. This was the 5 in 1 tour. We heard the story of the New Orleans Axe Murderer. He loved Jazz music because it was the music of the devil. He told New Orleans that his next murder would be in a house that wasn’t playing Jazz on that night. So every house in the city was playing Jazz. The city became loud with the sound of music. There wasn’t a band around that didn’t get paid to play Jazz. In fact it became such a staple of New Orleans that they told all their friends across the country to come there to play music. They said it was easy money… so come to the Big Easy.

The other story I hadn’t heard was of a Turkish son of royalty. He came and setup residency in New Orleans and had his own harem. He told everyone of his being next in line for the throne. What he didn’t tell them was that he had an older brother. So when the Sultan died the brother sent people to New Orleans and had his brother and everyone with him killed. The brother was buried alive in the back yard.

So that was the first day with my sister. I believe I walked 22,000 steps today and made my way across the French Quarter at least 5 times. Something I couldn’t have done a couple of months ago. But it was a great day with family.