Our NOLA Trip - 28th Wedding Anniversary Part II

Unfortunately, due to being able to post only 5 pictures per post here, I’ve had to divide up the report. And since blogs are arranged how they are, you have to go backwards. So start on “Our NOLA Trip – Part I” and go from there through “Our NOLA Trip – Part X”

We walked some more, going into shops and enjoying the buildings and cobbly streets and taking a bazillion pictures:




Every minute I found a picture to capture - sometimes it was just a doorway or window or a peek into a sliver of a courtyard garden:


The places that we saw included:

Kitchen Witch - a culinary used book store. Fabulous place. I could have wandered around there for hours, not to mention spent hundreds of dollars. They even had a good selection of the little cookbooks that used to come with new appliances - wonderful retro illustrations and recipes! And the resident black lab was a sweetie. I'd love a store like this to be near me, but I'm sure that Mr. Kim and our budget appreciate the distance!

Historic New Orleans Collection - a museum that contains a nice gift shop (postcards!), a home tour of the late 18th century residence and exhibits including old maps, prints and models. We didn't do the tour owing to time constraints, but it is a beautiful space. Mr. Kim did take 20 minutes to go through a display room outside of the main museum that contained old plats and maps of the early city, along with early bank scrip and letters and bills of conveyance of cotton and iron and humans and land. There is such an easily accessible spirit of the history of this place that it is easy for the casual visitor to forget that the modern city is thriving right on top of it.

The French Market - tacky, tacky, tacky. Gone are the true farmer’s stalls of the past, having given away to touristy gotchas. Souvenirs, t-shirts, geegaws, etc. Food shops with no fragrance. We bought a few things (hee). Some jewelry and at the one stall that was truly interesting, a little brass icon for The Child. The 'icons' (I don't really know what else to call them) were from Mexico, not NOLA and were all made of brass with little doors that opened (this seemed somehow very important to the proprietor, because he showed me the door on each one I looked at) and little picture cut outs - they were of Jesus and Mary mostly, all biblical figures and saints, except, oddly, a few with Frida Kahlo and her disturbing eyebrow. They were fascinating little artifacts and I had a hard time picking out just one.

Boutique du Vampyre - the Little Book seemed to like this place, but we weren't very impressed. Seemed like an upscale touristy place determined not to acknowledge it's debt to Anne Rice and Twilight, but happy to cash in on it. The proprietor kept announcing how everything was locally made, written, etc. Liked the dog, though.

Maskarade - a charming shop that we had the hardest time finding - turned out to be right across the street from our hotel! Amazingly beautiful and intricate art quality masks. You see masks for sale everywhere in NOLA, but they are mostly junk. A cute souvenir that will get tossed in a couple of years. But these masks were truly gorgeous:




Feathered, sequined, painted. The proprietress was lovely and we had quite a nice chat with her. She encouraged us to take pictures, so I have a lovely souvenir of our visit. I'm very lucky that they didn't have any Oz themed masks. I'd have been in Trouble!