2 Room The rooms were all different sizes; I happened to get a pretty big one.
3 Room The furniture was old; the tv did not get turned on once.
4 Courtyard There were banana trees in the courtyard, a koi pond and a swimming pool further back.
5 Joan of Arc She's the patron saint of Orleans, so she's pretty big in NOLA too.
6 Beignets Breakfast at Cafe du Monde... sugar sugar sugar!
7 Jackson Square Here I am looking toward the Mississippi River, with the St. Louis Cathedral behind me.
8 Mississippi River A river boat, and the Aquarium of the Americas in the distance (the round building).
9 Musician A guy was playing sax for a bunch of kids on a field trip.
10 Flower I call this, the pink bottle brush flower... I have no idea what it really is. You can see a couple of bees in it if you enlarge the picture.
11 Oak A lovely tree in Jackson Square; like the ones at the Rice University campus in Houston, these had ferns growing on them.
12 Summer These statues were in the corners of the park at Jackson Square. I'm thinking they depict the four seasons. This idle youth has a bunch of grapes and a trashy novel, so I'm guessing he represents summer.
13 Fall This maiden has a sickle, so she seems to represent fall.
14 Spring This lady has a cornucopia full of flowers and a tambourine.
15 Winter This old fellow has a heavy cloak, a bag full of toys, and a ping-pong paddle.
16 Reading Friend Lauren is getting a Tarot reading. She said it was a pretty good one, too.
17 St. Louis Cathedral One of the many Mary statues.
18 St. Louis Cathedral More Joan of Arc.
19 St. Louis Cathedral Here's the main altar.
20 St. Louis Cathedral This is at the top of the main altar structure in the front. Is it Mary? She has a cross and a chalice.
21 Jesus The locals call him 'Touchdown Jesus', I was told. The rock in front of him has a light in it, and at night it shines up and casts a huge shadow on the church wall behind it.
22 Two Sisters Friend Phil at the Court of Two Sisters, a fancy restaurant with a beautiful wisteria canopy.
23 Holocaust memorial These were glass panes about 10 feet tall. This was alongside the boardwalk by the river between Jackson Square and the Aquarium of the Americas.
24 Holocaust memorial Here's the memorial from a different angle.
25 Holocaust memorial This was looking at them more from the side.
26 Aquarium of the Americas This was the entranceway- a neat tunnel of fish.
27 Aquarium of the Americas Here was my favorite part- the stingray petting pool. They're hard to see in the picture, but they're about a foot across or so. They seemed to enjoy human attention.
28 Aquarium of the Americas I got there just in time to see the penguin feeding. These guys made it through Katrina unlike most of the fish :(.
29 Aquarium of the Americas Seahorses! I was trying to cover the flash so it didn't wash out the picture, but you can still see the reflection pretty well. The seahorses were about the size of peach pits.
30 Aquarium of the Americas The Picard fish, or to the non-nerd set the lion fish. Very poisonous.
31 Aquarium of the Americas They had a Mississippi River exhibit with rehabilitated raptors. Eric said the fake hillbilly house made this hawk look gigantic. He was maybe a foot tall.
32 Aquarium of the Americas Here's an owl, looking disdainful.
33 Street shot Your typical French Quarter tourist photo.
34 Bourbon Street Here's Pan at a local boozeria.
35 Swamp tour We took a two hour boat ride around the Honey Island Swamp.
36 Swamp tour Here was a 4-foot alligator. They're easy to spot if you look for the striped tail.
37 Swamp tour The boat captain lured the gator closer to the boat by throwing food into the water.
38 Swamp tour What food tempts alligators? Marshmallows.
39 Swamp tour The captain thinks alligators might like marshmallows because they look like turtle eggs, but who knows?
40 Swamp tour This is the gator right after he chomped the marshmallow. In case you were wondering, you can tell how long a gator is by looking at the distance between his eyes and nose- however many inches that is is how many feet long the beast is.
41 Swamp tour In case there were no animals to see, the captain brought his daughter's pet rat snake and passed him around. That's me holding him; he was a cool animal.
