New Orleans in the Spring

We spent last week in New Orleans.  We got lucky and it coincided with French Quarter Festival, which is a huge music festival featuring only local musicians.  On Saturday there were 32 music stages. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 people attended in 2014, but with a forecast calling for rain everyday attendance was way down this year.  There was also a dance event going on, so there were lots of dancers from out of town dancing in the street during the day and then dances at night.  The rain wasn't that bad.  There was a late storm on Friday and Saturday that shut down the later acts but it moved through and left nice weather for the evening.  It rained all day Sunday, but by then we were in our car driving back to Louisville.  We went to the swamp and saw lots of alligators and turtles and snakes and lizards and birds.  We did an airboat tour through the bayous.  The airboat was surprisingly maneuverable.  We wandered around Louis Armstrong Park.  We ate lots of good food like oysters and beignets and soft shell crab tacos.  We did a lot of walking and a lot of dancing.  We listened to a lot of live music.  There is still so much we didn't do that we are planning on going back next year.

So many hot sauces

Jean Lafitte Preserve

Cypress trees in the swamp

Lizard fight!

Moving the floats for the morning parade

Aurora Nealand

The church near where we started had the Treme` Brass Band entertaining a large group of high school students, so we stepped in to listen for a minute.

Spanish moss

Some friends from Louisville that were there at the same time

Louis Armstrong statue in the park that bears his name

Dancing in the French Quarter

Washboard Chaz blues trio

Walking through the afternoon rain