The Rest of the Quarter

We managed to get around the French Quarter and spend time looking and talking with merchants. If you haven't been to New Orleans, the city looks somewhat normal on the surface. If you have been or really do some exploring you will discover just how empty the city really is.

We went to the River Walk and wandered through all of the shops. About 1/3 of them were actually open. This place was trashed after the storm so any sign of life is a warm welcome. Some of the larger shops like Eddie Bauer have closed up and do not plan on returning. We saw the Sensation which is the cruise ship that the NOPD personnel are living on.

This is a view of the Sensation from the West Bank taken on 2/11/06. If you look at the glass building towards the front of the ship, you will notice the roof windows are still unrepaired.

After leaving the River Walk we walked down Decatur and looked around. My brother-in-law showed me the special permits from the health department that restaurants have to get before opening. Seems that they take the flooding and lack of electricity serious. What was suprising was the number of restaurants and bars that did not have them up. Being 2 weeks from Mardi Gras, you would think they would want to open.

We cut over to Bourbon St. via Jackson Square. No artists, fortune tellers or panhandlers. Weird. For a Saturday at 6:00pm, it was a strange feeling. Not one tourist shop had a visitor in it. We spoke with several owners and they stated they were open because they had to pay rent. Overall they stated business was dead. Even the small bars only had 1 or 2 people in them. Some of the larger bars had small crowds but you could tell they weren't tourists. Mostly workers taking the afternoon off and getting smashed.


This picture is of the city taken from the West Bank on 2/14/06.









This photo is one of the many trailer parks all over the state. This one had RVs as well as tent trailers. It is behind Blaine Kerne's Mardi Gras World