Yes we did travel across country and visited a cemetery on our first full day in town. I had heard and read a bit about the cemeteries in New Orleans and knew there were any number of tours of them so I felt we needed to visit at least one. So today we decided to do things a little farther afield than the French Quarter. We took the Charles Street streetcar to the Garden District. The streetcar really are fun to ride being a true part of an older New Orleans as the cars are original and fun to ride. They are slow but that is good to being able to watch the neighborhood pass by.

The Lafayette Cemetery #1 is really interesting with it above ground tombs . The tombs were arranged as if part of a town with streets between them, many of them designed like temples or other structures. Hopefully the pictures will do justice to the fascinating place. It is definitely still a used cemetery as there were many burials in the 2000's. It was interesting that the walking guide I bought of the Garden District noted that the tombs were typically built with two chambers a top one and lower one. The top one was for the actual burial. The bottom one was used to hold the old bones from the top burial when a new burial was planned for the tomb. The old bones were swept into the lower chamber. An economical use of space very much reminiscent of how European cemeteries were operated.

The walk through the Garden District was enjoyable seeing the old homes built in what I would say was a plantation style. I loved the wrought iron work that was used on so many of the homes. One of the notable houses we saw was the house where Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Confederate States of America died in 1889 . The area put Capitol Hill in Seattle to shame and that is the only area I have been to with so many large homes in one neighborhood. It was noted for a number of homes that when they were originally built the occupied the whole block. Later the land was divided to have a couple other homes on the block also. The original home though still dominated the block though. There were kept up well with remodeling going on with some homes.

Our walk was cut short by a downpour that had us scampering for a coffee shop by the cemetery. When we finally left it was still raining steady so we caught the streetcar back to the city to stop at the World War II museum. It was a large museum and the exhibits were really done well. The described not only the military aspects of the war but talked about the home front, rationing, recycling and bond drives and the rapid change of our economy to a wartime one producing amazing quantities of weapons.

One of the aspects I enjoyed was the short films and short audio recordings they had. The recordings were remembrances of various aspects of the war form Americans, English and German soldiers. It really brought out a different aspect of the war for me hearing the individual stories. We spent close to 3 hours in the museum having lunch first than seeing the exhibits.

After the Museum we headed back to our hotel to change for a wonderful dinner at Richard Fiske's Martini Bar & Restaurant. They were one of many restaurants having fixed price 4 course meals for Christmas. We pick Richard Fiske's and glad we did. It was a very enjoyable dinner with live music. A wonderful relaxing 2 hours were spent there before heading off to Harrah's Casino to give them some money. A long but fun day in New Orleans even with the terrible rainstorm we got caught in.