New Orleans Spooks Margaret (Part 2)

"Visitors staying in this hotel would go home, have their film developed, and find pictures of themselves sleeping in their beds...taken from the ceiling!"

I heard this ghost story and many other convincing tales on the New Orleans Spirit Tours Ghost and Vampire Tour. The visitors mentioned above were staying in the Andrew Jackson Inn which at one time was a boarding school for boys. There was a fire in which some of the students perished, and these became the mischievous photographers who also noisily haunt the halls.


Like me, our tour guide, George, is skeptical about the existence of vampires. Thanks to recent movies and television shows, vampires are a big, big topic in New Orleans. Believer or not, George had some interesting stories about them. One tale describes a mysterious and dashing man-about-town from last century who suddenly disappeared. When his New Orleans social set researched his name, they found that it matched another character from generations before in Europe. The two men even matched the same description down to the "diamonds in his clothes" part. Was he a vampire? A ghost?


Whether or not vampires really exist (I hope not), there does exist a community of wanna-bees who hang out in clubs like the Dungeon, just off Bourbon Street. Walking past this establishment, even in the daytime when it was closed, gave me the willies. (It was also uncomfortably close to my own hotel.)


Ghosts and vampires may or may not exist, but one piece of New Orleans culture might be the most chilling of all. In the cemeteries, bodies are buried above ground because of the high water table. These family tombs are like real estate, and as with any property, there is a limited supply. (Do you know where I'm going with this?) After at least a year and a day (an old rule that allows for the quick decomposition that occurs in the NOLA climate), when there is a new body to be interred, the coffins of previous residents are removed and destroyed. The contents/remains/bones are pushed back into the crypts underneath (called caveaux) to make room for the incoming deceased. (Creeped-out yet?) As I mentioned, these tombs are property, and as such can be sold. New owners can agree to let the remains of the previous stay, or, they can insist that the tomb be cleaned out and the bones deposited elsewhere. (Shiver.)

In case you're wondering, no pictures of me sleeping in my comfy white Hotel Monteleone bed taken from the ceiling materialized on my memory card. (Phew!) How would I have reacted to that?! The Monteleone is supposed to be haunted, too, but I haven't heard any tales, or looked for any, either.

New Orleans Captivates Margaret, (Part 1)

Sitting on the airplane, catching up on my journal, I realized I would have to limit my New Orleans posts to the sights and experiences that I found the most interesting. It might seem strange to pair a cathedral with street jazz musicians, and then mention piles of powdered sugar with doughnuts underneath, but these are the big surprises of New Orleans. We did visit the famous Bourbon Street, a few times, but it was close to what I expected. I intend to concentrate here on the delightful surprises.

The Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, sits just north of Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Taken from pretty Jackson Square, almost any photo of the cathedral will have Crepe Myrtle, magnolia, and palm trees in the foreground. I couldn't resist taking a few photos of the Spanish-style cathedral, but I hadn't planned on entering until (of all people) our ghost-and-vampire tourguide advised us not to miss it. It might have been partly the turbo air-conditioning on a beastly-hot day, but to me, the cathedral was breathtaking and I wanted to stay in there and inspect every stained-glass window (those tell Saint Louis's story), every shrine, every ceiling painting, and every piece of Catholic symbolism. This cathedral has more recently (1964) been named a basilica (meaning an archbishop presides here) and the umbrella see left) and bells encased in glass symbolize this important designation. If the Pope should visit, he is greeted with the umbrella, a symbol of hospitality as it is too narrow to protect him from actual rain. The massive organ pipes are framed by an arch illuminated by golden vines and angels reminding me of the prominence of music in this city. The organ was water-damaged during Hurricane Katrina and had to be sent away to be fixed. It was reinstalled in 2008.

I expected to find jazz musicians on the streets of the French Quarter, but I did not expect them to be so good! Almost every block had some unusual combination of instruments playing technically-virtuosic, heartfelt, and intense jazz. My favorite, just down the street from Aunt Sally's Pralines, was a clarinet player endowed with the technical prowess of Benny Goodman jamming with an equally accomplished trombonist. They were playing in a Dixieland style. As a longtime clarinetist who has enjoyed many friendships with trombonists over the years, I appreciated this combination. Music is after all, a kind of conversation between musicians, and jazz is the most personal kind of conversation. As usual, when I heard this clarinet I heard it as my voice even though I never was and never will be as good as the player sitting on this bench. By the way, the bucket says, " My name is Fill=up D. Bucket!"

These guys outside the cathedral were irresistible. I heard the saxophonist alone as I was shooting photos of Jackson Square and the exterior of the cathedral. Then the drummer joined him and added a hot beat and some vocals--WOW!!! I could feel some swing-dance moves coming on, but oh, no partner (shucks).

On the other side of Jackson Square is the famous Cafe du Monde. I couldn't get near this place until my last day in New Orleans because it was so crowded. Finally after our city tour, Linda and I popped in for some beignets in the late afternoon. Sadly though, the sousaphone player who had been there Sunday for this photo was not there to entertain us on Monday. She had the required cafe au lait, but I stuck with a nice cold diet soft drink (they don't say soda). I will admit to making a mess with that powdered sugar, but it was worth it and in my defense, so was everyone else! The small cafe tables were covered with it. I think I might start a movement to replace all Starbucks with Cafes du Monde. What do you think?

Signs of Spring in Cape May, New Jersey

I remember working on an assignment in second or third grade where we had to go out into nature and find 'Signs of Spring.' We probably had to make some kind of visual presentation, but I don't remember that. I do remember finding buds on trees, tiny leaves, dandelions, and probably pansies. I think of that assignment every year when the trees start to bud, and today as I walked through Cape May on a fabulous five-house Private Home Tour, I identified some Cape May signs of spring.

I did notice more traffic on the southbound highways last night, and I noticed more cars competing with me for the best free parking. But I'm trying to keep this post focused on positive things, so I'll point out that there were many folks biking around the city today. These bikes were parked outside Congress Hall.
It was a warm spring day, so there were quite a few people catching some rays on the beach. You can tell it is not summer because those tents on Steger's...uh, I mean Jackson Street Beach aren't unfurled yet.Tulips, of course. It's actually a little late for tulip viewing, but these looked nice on Washington Street Mall. Cape May takes pride in its tulips because the earliest European residents were Dutch.

So back to that Private Home Tour: loved it. I felt like I was being nosy at first paying money to sniff around other people's homes, but each of the hosts seemed pleased to show off their beautiful homes. I'm going to blog at length about this for the NJ.com Jersey Shore blog, so I won't get into detail here, but I will say this tour was a special treat. Cape May's Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities, the tour organizers, asked that we respect the homeowners' privacy and not take photos inside. Here's a shot of one of my favorites, possibly because the lady of the house is a stitcher and a gardener and that was evident throughout.
Here's my favorite elementary school sign of spring, buds on trees:Each house had a docent stationed on the porch assigned to chat us up until the hosts were ready. One of these docents pointed out something I hadn't realized before. Cape May has trees. Lots of big, old, shade-giving, leaf-shedding trees. Other New Jersey shore towns, not so much. You learn something every tour.

Longwood Gardens II: Every Flower's Got a Story

I suspect I get my love of flowers from my parents. They always had flowers in the gardens. My father enjoyed shooting photos of flowers, especially those he had grown himself. He experimented with light and filters and backgrounds. We have some nice dahlia photos of his, but most are in the form of slides. Perhaps I was channeling him at Longwood Gardens last week when I took about five hundred flower photos and spent quite a lot of hours sorting and cropping afterward. That's all I do--crop--I don't enhance my photos in any way. This post contains my favorite non-orchid flower photos.

That top photo is a gardenia. That was Mom's favorite flower. I don't remember her growing gardenias until my father passed away and one of her friends bought her a bush to cheer her up. It still thrives in Cape May, and is loaded with pink gardenias in mid-spring. The problem is, Mom loved white gardenias because she carried them when she got married in 1943. She didn't have a fancy white dress or professional photos to remember the day because it was wartime. She and my father were married in their uniforms, U.S. Coast Guard for him and Navy WAVES for her, and the white gardenias were the one luxury. There's now a white gardenia bush next to the pink one in Cape May, purchased in memory of her.

I do remember Mom growing roses. I have never had luck with roses (they practically die when I breathe on them), but Mom grew roses in many colors wherever we lived. Some of her salmon and pink ones still bloom in Cape May, but I don't get too close. I like this photo because I got the blurry background thing right.

Dad's favorite flower, besides dahlias, was the bird of paradise. I remember these growing on the porch of the Cape May house, but once we left Cape May for Staten Island, he turned over his plants to his friend Fred (a mechanic with a greenhouse) for safekeeping. This is my best bird of paradise shot from Longwood:

Generally, I favor hibiscus. Sometimes, I get them to grow and bloom in my own garden. Cape May is a whole different gardening zone from Hamilton, so I'd probably have more luck there except that I'm not there often enough to water them. But here's a nice shot from Longwood:

I pulled out my fish-eye lens to shoot the palm room. The window panes in the background and the palms themselves make a nice effect curved on the sides. There's another one like this that includes Fred (another mechanic, but without a greenhouse) holding my pocketbook. He doesn't like that one.
There's no story behind this shot except that I really like these flowers. I think it's the color. I have one garden beside my house that has almost exclusively this color blooms of different varieties with yellow flowers.

Finally, here's a vintage shot I took in May, 1977, of my parents at the Topiary Garden at Longwood Gardens. (This one I had to touch-up a little bit.)

Longwood Gardens' Orchid Extravaganza

I had been meaning to walk around Longwood Gardens with my camera for months--I missed the chrysanthemums in fall and the holiday lights--but thanks to a great deal from Groupon I got to see the orchid show. Thousands of orchids in countless varieties were worked into the exhibit areas in the Conservatory, and the usual orchid room was full of colorful specimen. I am no orchid expert and wouldn't attempt to grow them, but I can shoot them with the Nikon...I LOVE the unusual color on these:

How do these know to form a perfect sphere?

Is this one my favorite? I'm not sure.

Tijuana, Baby!

I was warned not to tempt fate in Tijuana because I would become the victim of unspeakable horrors, but at the same time I was encouraged to explore Tijuana for the delicious food and low, low prices on silver, serapes, tequila, and vanilla. The truth of the matter is, it probably would be dangerous to venture over the border alone in a rental car not knowing where I was going. But a three-hour bus trip with a group of tourists and a knowledgeable, experienced bus driver seemed like a fun way to spend an afternoon. I was right. After the trip, I asked Rick the bus driver if there are ever any problems on this tour. He said in 24 years of driving busloads of tourists back and forth over the border, he can only count three instances where people had problems. In each instance, the tourists had wandered off the main tourist street and had money or jewelry stolen.

Rick told us everything we needed to know on the way south from San Diego.
1. Stay on Avenue Revolucion between 1st and 10th streets, (otherwise unspeakable horrors...),
2. Don't pay the first price quoted: haggle. (I got pretty good at this mainly by stating that I couldn't afford that price and heading for the door.)
3. Whatever you buy has to be carried over the border at customs,
3. "If he's holding a gun, don't take a picture,"
and the scariest of all to me,
4. "Don't eat at that restaurant up there." (Evidently there's a custom where they force tequila down your throat and then shake up your brains to disorient you.)


I was warned not to take a Tijuana taxi. Here they all are getting gassed-up at one of the government-controlled stations:Rick warned us about purchasing prescription drugs cheap at the many drugstores in the tourist area. This was no temptation for me since I take no prescription medicines, but if I had the slightest inclination to save some money this way I would have been discouraged by sights like this:Rick even drove his bus up and down Avenue Revolucion to point out the more reputable establishments. I stayed close to those, bought some Mexican textiles, some geegaws, and had a fabulous lunch of chicken mole preceded by chips and the most awesomely delicious salsa ever. If I lived in Tijuana, I would eat at Tia Juana Tilly's (recommended by Rick) everyday. By the way, there is a legend in Mexico that Tijuana was named after someone's Aunt (Tia) Juana. This is not true, but that nickname is seen a lot.

What I would not do everyday if I lived in Tijuana is get my picture taken behind a striped donkey, but this was fun to do once.

San Diego, California, by Water

During any conference, there has to be some downtime to rest the brain. During a conference in San Diego, this downtime is likely spent walking the Embarcadero, admiring the super-yachts and wondering who the heck lives like that, people watching, cruising over the bay for a walk around Coronado (the movie "Some Like it Hot" was filmed at the Hotel del Coronado),
or touring the USS Midway.This enormous aircraft carrier served the US Navy for forty-seven years, beginning right after the Japanese surrender in 1945. It is difficult to get a sense of the length of the flight deck with the many restored aircraft poised for duty, but it is a whopping 1,001 feet long.
My colleagues and I toured the entire ship, saw the bunks and control rooms, and even spent some time in the brig.

As my colleagues flew home after the conference, I hung around for a couple of days to explore. I walked through the Maritime Museum, made up of floating ships rather than buildings. I eavesdropped on a class learning about the Star of India (1863), the oldest active merchant ship in the world.
I was surprised to encounter the HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th century British Royal Navy frigate which was featured in the movie "Master and Commander". (I will have to re-watch this movie as I embarrassed myself by falling asleep during my first viewing in the theater. And it was my selection. I was really tired that evening. My friend was annoyed.)
The 1974 B-39 Soviet Attack Submarine was memorable partly for the small, round, three-foot-maximum passageways I had to maneuver through.

Keeping with the nautical theme, I signed on for a whale watching cruise that afternoon. although the promotional documents guaranteed whale sightings, I was skeptical. Way out, almost ten miles into the Pacific Ocean, we did see three Pacific Gray Whales. We were told to watch out for heart-shaped spouts,
and then to look for breaching whales, and whale flukes.
I was thrilled, these being my first whale photos after many Atlantic Ocean whale watching cruises. Our naturalist, from the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, thought one of these three was a yearling and mentioned that these Pacific Gray Whales are the size of a VW Beetle when born.

After a long day of water sightseeing, I headed out to El Cajon Boulevard to my post-conference hotel, the Lafayette. This formerly opulent hotel was a favorite of movie stars in the 1940s and features a swimming pool designed by Johnny Weismuller of "Tarzan" fame.

The hotel is undergoing a renovation and shows promise, but don't stay there anytime soon unless you enjoy carrying heavy suitcases up a flight of concrete stairs. Hey, I saved some money AND got to stay in the Mae West suite.