We arrived in New Orleans on a Monday morning in gloomy weather. It stayed gloomy for three days. Just heavy cloud, no sun, a little chilly and on and off drizzle, not enough to hamper us getting around to get a look at things.

We stayed in a Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street which is the main drag through town and on the up river edge of the French Quarter. The FQ is the main touristy district of The Big Easy. New Orleans is known as ‘The Big Easy’ because it is considered to be a ‘laid back’ place. Allthego suspects this ‘laid back’ approach to things might come from the fusion of cultures that exist here. French, Spanish, African, Native American, Italian even a bit of English had seeped in. Food is a great example of this, the food New Orleans is known for is relatively inexpensive and mirrors the ‘peasant foods’ of provincial France, West Africa and Italy.

Beignets are a classic breakfast item. Donut like but with a hollowish interior, heavily dusted with icing sugar (most of which we brushed off!). We had these again at Cafe du Monde in the French Markets, listening to a sax player playing ‘Old Man River’ among others. Calas is a slave era rice based ‘dumpling’, flavoured with nutmeg. Eaten at breakfast, hard to get these days. We found it a bit dry.

The gumbo is a southern classic, originated during the Slave period as a staple. Stew like and quite heavily spiced. Comes with varied ingredients, meat, sausage, shrimp, fish etc.

We had pre booked a 3 hour food tour of the FQ, turned up for it in the drizzle and finally found the red headed Irish descended (plus some French) young lady guide. As the only starters we effectively had a private tour, really interesting chats with her along the way as we sampled the iconic foods in local establishments.

Poboy is a contraction of ‘Poor Boy’, a soft bun with a crisp thin crust stuffed with almost anything on hand. Plus lettuce, tomato and mayo. Originated from old times when the poor were given stale French bread and left over meats, hence Poboy. If you leave off the lettuce etc they are said to be ‘undressed’, as opposed to being ‘dressed’.

Muffaletta shows the Italian influence, salami, ham and cheese in a seed topped bun. In the middle is a chopped green olive salad. Rather tasty, if you like olives.

Gator balls are self explanatory, the gator is supposed to taste like chicken. We found these didn’t have quite enough bite for our tastes.

The tour finished in the early evening and it was a slow walk back along Bourbon Street in the drizzle. Being the start of the week things are a little slow and the live music only starts up in earnest around 8pm. It is apparently livelier earlier towards the end of the week.

We headed back to the hotel, felt more comfortable back there. Starting to be a little wary as the years roll on.

The next couple of days were spent getting around on the Hop on Hop off bus. We particularly enjoyed the Garden District with the old pre and post Civil War mansions, many having been restored.

The bus ticket included a guided walk up and around the Washington St block. The guide noted that iron work on a property was a symbol of wealth, the more elaborate the greater the wealth!

Interesting bits of historic urban memorabilia remain on some of the footpaths; hitching posts, iron posts on street corners and iron plates with street names over gutters. Strolled past Sandra Bullock’s local digs. Impressive property.

Also had some time along a section of Magazine St, a local shopping and food precinct. Some unusual little establishments to look through.

We also took the opportunity to hop off and have a look at the city’s Catholic Cathedral off Jackson Square, near the spot where the United States purchased Louisiana from the French in 1803.

Also near here is a museum with a Mardi Gras display and the Cyclone Katrina story. Mardi Gras is quite an event here, reflecting its French and African roots. All of society seems to take part with floats and parades. A bit of a contrast with Sydney’s Mardi Gras which seems to be mostly an event popularised by the LGBTQ+ community.

The Cyclone Katrina display was also revealing. A lot more than what we saw on the TV in Australia went on during this disaster and in the months long recovery period. Makes our flood clean ups look like Sunday school picnics, to use an old expression!

Allthego has focussed a bit on food in this blog, but hey y’all that’s one of his weaknesses, the stomach. Y’all is a ‘new’ word he has learnt. A plural second person pronoun, in Aus we say ‘you lot’ and some have been heard to say ‘youse all’. This little book might help me inflict some Southern cooking on y’all. Howzat!

We enjoyed the short stopover in New Orleans, despite the weather, and now head off to Houston to visit Mitchell and Piper for Thanksgiving Week and her birthday.

An old Credence song came to mind as we plied our way down the river after leaving Natchez. Credence was singing about a road and meeting people ‘up around the bend’, all we met ‘up around the bend’ was more water and more bends.

Quite a few river barges passed us as well, carrying various cargoes up and down the river. It is an industrial and commercial waterway and has suffered ecologically from that experience over the last 150 years, it is starting to make a comeback. But a big job!

The Mississippi is the second longest river in the US at 3,766 km. It and its tributaries pass through 32 States. It rises in Northern Minnesota and flows south draining 2.98m sq km between the Rocky Mts in the west and the Appalachian Mts in the east. The Missouri is the longest river in the US, rising in the Rockies in Montana flowing east and south for 3,767 km, it is 1 km longer than the Mississippi an example of American precision! The Missouri joins the Mississippi at St Louis, more or less the middle of the US. The rivers form the fourth longest river system in the world. It truly is a big ditch.

Our first stop after Natchez is at St. Francisville and marks the transition from the dominance of cotton to sugar cane. It was around these parts that the sugar plantations would stretch for miles with immense wealth being generated from the application of slave labour before the Civil War in the 1860s. In St. Francisville we visit our first plantation mansion, a much restored property. The Myrtles, originally built in 1796. Quite a sight. And a great contrast with the slaves living conditions.

The plantation mansions were generally surrounded by huge oak trees, some are still here 150-250 years old. Many of the homes were destroyed during the civil war and others fell into disrepair. Later restored they have been turned into hotels and tourist attractions.
We had a short wander around St. Francisville, quite a small town at about 1800 people. It has its roots in Cajun country but there is a big English historical influence in the post Civil War Victorian homes that dot the town among a number of prewar homes.

Grace Episcopal Church also pre dates the war, the graveyard has numerous memorials to the fallen.

It was Veteran’s Day when we were there and the military had been through planting flags on all the graves of veterans, including those from the civil war.

Further down the river we called into Houmas House and Nottoway House. Their stories being much the same. Some readers may recognise the name Paul Ramsay, the Australian entrepreneur (now dead) behind the Ramsay Hospital Group. He acquired Nottoway House in the early 2000s for US$4.5m, subsequently spent US$14m restoring it for guests etc. In 2019, after his death, it was sold for US$3.5m. His plot for it hadn’t worked and he did his dough in a big way!

At the end of the Civil War the slaves were freed but in a lot of cases they really had nowhere to go. So they remained on the plantations as share farmers. Holding small plots that sold their crop to the former plantation owner who paid them. This money was then spent in the plantation store for food etc and also for supplies in order to plant the following crop. Not much if anything was left over. A bit like the English feudal system! The system eventually began to collapse with the advance of mechanisation in the years before and after WW1.

Nottoway was our last stop before journeying the last 140km or so down to New Orleans. We didn’t see much of this part of the river as we were asleep arriving in New Orleans at about 3am.
The trip has been an interesting experience. The river itself is not a ‘pretty picture’; its attraction I think is in the human history, the music story and the culinary delights that one passes through along the way. We did not see a lot of wild life on the river, even aboard the boat things were subdued!

Including us there were 8 Aussies aboard, a few from various parts of the UK and Ireland. The rest Americans. We tried to make up for them!

New Orleans awaits for a few days.

The morning after arriving from Memphis we headed off from the Terrene Landing on the bus to Cleveland, our first shore excursion.

There are 28 Clevelands in the United States. Named presumably after Grover Cleveland, twice President in the late 1800s. Quite a good stop in Cleveland. First off was the Grammy Museum, a branch of the Los Angeles institution. It is situated here in Cleveland because of its position on Route 61, the music trail from New Orleans to Chicago.

The museum documents grammy history with a mesmerising video about the Grammy Nights with excerpts from Grammy winners and their songs. The museum also tells the story of how ‘the blues’ morphed from its genesis in the slaved labour cotton fields into southern church music and finally big band music. The music seemed to seep its way up the highway. There are various landmarks along the route explaining its progress.
We then went to a rather good model railway housed in an old railway station. Amazing work and presentation. Tap the video below for all the action.

The final stop was at the museum documenting the role of Chinese immigrants in the local community. There was a tear jerker video telling the story of how two young descendants, living in LA, of a Chinese immigrant had discovered their family history at the museum. Quite a story. The Chinese immigrants from the mid late 1800s in the USA appear to have been subject to the some sort of prejudices as those in Australia at the same time. They had their own version of the White Australia policy.

Back to the boat for the sail away at 5pm and a night on board steaming down to Natchez. We had originally been scheduled to stop earlier at Vicksburg, the site of a major Civil War battle. This had to be cancelled because of water levels.

Vicksburg is located in a canal off the River and we couldn’t get up it to the landing. So it was a day of steamboating along the river. This was not a bad option because we got to see the river in daylight, the boat was to do most of the journey at night when we’re asleep.

The weather was very pleasant and we had some good views of the river banks, forests and sand bars along the way. The river flows quite quickly and is very muddy.

That evening we were entertained by a Mark Twain look a like, he regaled us in a monologue of snippets of his life. Really good stuff!

Arrived in Natchez in the early hours next morning and tied up at the landing below what is known as the ‘town under the hill’. In the old days this was the seedy part of Natchez, it is now gone having been washed away in floods. Natchez is one of the oldest towns along the river having been founded by the Spanish, before the French and later the English arrived. It was a major cotton plantation area in the 1800s.

The town sits atop a bluff with commanding views of the river in both directions, a strategic location. This was where the well to do lived.

We had a music adventure first up at the Big Muddy, a renovated Victorian era house. It operates as an inn and blues room. Quite a show was put on while we ate some canapés and sipped a Mimosa or two. Amy Allen pumped out a smorgasbord of old blues hits while thumping the piano and guitar. Best seen in the video above.

After lunch it was off to a functioning cotton plantation, Frogmore. It was formerly a slave property that has continued on to the present day. Changing farming practices along the way. Some museum pieces in the fields hark back to the 1800s, Allthego gets down and dirty picking some cotton.

The weather has been treating us kindly, sunny blue skies. The town residents though keep saying “never seen the river so low”. More about the river next time.

In the last post there was a bit about the ducks and a photo. The photo is actually a link to a video, tap the photo and it will take you to an exciting video!

Ahead of joining the American Queen on the river we had to move hotels to be where the cruise connection was located. Fortunately, it was a short one block walk to the Memphis Peabody Hotel and we were able to get there and receive an early check in.

The Peabody is perhaps Memphis’s oldest hotel. The original building was opened in the late 1860s and was later enlarged and remodelled in Italianate style in 1925.

It is an imposing building with a very ornate and elaborate foyer. It was the place to stay and be seen in prewar Memphis. It closed in the 1970s but was soon reopened and spruced up by new owners. Today the hotel appears a little tired, the décor and carpets a bit worn. But then most of the people staying there with us appeared a little tired and worn too. Just like us!

The big attraction though at the hotel are ducks. The world famous Peabody Ducks. Since 1933 ducks have marched on some red carpet from the elevators to the lobby fountain and back again. The ducks live on the roof of the hotel in the Duck Palace. At 11 am each morning they come down the elevator and march to the fountain. They swim around in the fountain until 5 pm when they get out and march back to the elevator and go up to the Duck Palace for the night. This show has been repeated every day since 1933, controlled by the Duckmaster. Quite a show!

Tap the picture and it will take you to a video.

The hotels French restaurant does not serve duck!
The next morning we headed off on an excursion to Graceland. This was included as part of the river cruise program. Allthego is not a huge fan of the King of Rock & Roll, a little before Allthego’s time. Graceland and the associated tourist complex across the road though is an eye opener to his influence and impact on the music scene.

The house itself, although large and with a few ‘gimic’ rooms, is relatively modest. The TV and music room is quite small and simple, apart from 3 TVs. He liked to have the 3 then stations on at the same time so that he didn’t miss anything. The pool room was unusual!

It took about an hour to tour through the house and some of the outside buildings which show cased the family history. The racquet ball building had been recently renovated and opened, this was like his personal squash court. It is where he played a game and later retired to the house and died a few hours later.

The outside walk then took us around to the area where Elvis is buried along with his parents and daughter Lisa Marie. Quite a simple area with some ornamentation.
It was then over to the ‘tourist’ complex for a couple of hours wandering around the exhibits, including Elvis’s two aeroplanes.

It was quite a display of his musical history; gold records, jump suits, motor cars all sorts of memorabilia, war time service details etc. The list goes on. In the background there is Elvis singing away as you look around.

One of the highlights though was having a quick lunch. It was hard to choose from the extensive menu of tasty treats. But we both settled on a plate of Peanut Butter and Banana toasted sandwiches.

These were one of Elvis’s favourite meals. Ours were toasted with butter, we passed on the bacon grease option. Probably would not go for these again. Not offensive in any way, just not the greatest taste.
Looking back on Graceland and the touristy stuff one senses that the King’s life and times have been sanitised a fair bit, there is none of the ‘blood and guts’ that happened along the way. But then, hey, why worry about all that stuff! The ‘family’ is telling the story, some rose coloured glasses are ok.
Back on the bus we returned to Memphis for a guided drive around the town before heading off to the boat. Our luggage had already been taken ahead of us.
The Mississippi River is currently running at very low water levels and travel along it is being hampered significantly. Some of the ports can’t be entered and our itinerary has been changed a little.

Unfortunately, the steamboat can’t get up the river to Memphis and we have to be bussed south to Cleveland to join it there for the night. It took a couple of hours to get there and board as the sun was going down. The luggage had also arrived ok, so we were all set for a week of steamboating.

We have arrived in Memphis for a few days before joining the American Queen paddle boat on its journey to New Orleans down the Mississippi River. We have actually now left Memphis and are on the boat. So this is a little catch up on our time in Memphis.
Memphis is an old cotton town and dates back to the early 1800s, named after Memphis on the River Nile (also but a much older cotton town).

Today, Memphis is still big in cotton but the cotton comes no where near the town like in the old days. Today it is from the farm direct to the transport, with no physical trading and wholesaling. A bit like wool is done in Australia.

That is enough about cotton. Memphis is also famous for its food and Beale Street. A reinvigorated touristy area with plenty of eateries. Pork in various forms is everywhere, distinguished in its preparation by the eateries own special marinades and sauces.

Pulled pork burgers, bacon, ribs and bones abound. Then there is the deep fried chicken specialties, again with various sauces. Hot dogs. Shrimp. Chips. And finally catfish, fried and grilled, rounds out the main fare offerings. We have had a go at a few of these to get into the spirit of the place. Steak and three veg were around but low down on the menus.

With the food comes the music, another Memphis draw card. Blues, Soul and Gospel have their roots in this part of the Deep South. We had lunch at the BB King’s Blues Club, named after the legendary singer. A band was playing full blast, at times we couldn’t hear ourselves eating!

We got up and down Main Street, and it is the main street, on the trolley system. $1 each way. This took us to the area where Martin Luther King was assassinated, the Lorraine Motel.

The Motel and surrounding buildings are much the same. There is a permanent wreath on the railing outside the room where he was shot. The National Civil Rights Museum is housed there.

Memphis is also a town of murals. Celebrating music, musicians, civil rights themes, football, basketball and stuff you can’t work out! They abound on buildings in many streets and alleys.

The biggest attraction though in Memphis is the King of Rock n Roll; Elvis Presley and Graceland.

But more about him and this extraordinary place Graceland, next time!

Off to the United States today for a month. Visiting Mitchell in Houston.

This is our first international flight in four years. COVID interrupted travel has kept us on the ground. The joys of airports abound in having to get there three hours before take off, participating in the technological revolution of contactless checking in, a long wait in a queue if there is some issue that the machine can’t cope with, like multiple stops on the way to the destination.

Then there is of course the need for a tea and coffee and some overpriced raisin toast to fill in some time before the plane opens its doors. On the other hand getting through security and border control was a breeze! Now sitting at the gate with an hour to go.

Before Houston we are heading for Memphis to join a paddle wheeler on the lower Mississippi River down to New Orleans for seven days. One of those bucket list trips. It will be worth the airline tucker to get to Memphis, going to take about 30 hours including stopovers in Auckland and Chicago.

Graceland and Elvis in Memphis ……..here we come!