Ever since I watched Bond's movie Live and Let Die, as a child, I've always wanted to visit New Orleans. That funeral scene has been stuck on my head, and I remember thinking that I wish funerals were all like that: fun. Well, maybe that's not possible in our society, but definately Mike and I are signing up for the New Orleans fun!
We'll spend 3 and half days at the North America's Jazz capital and I will try to register it's colors and beauty here, on my blog.
We'll leave on Friday, May 21 and will be back on Tuesday, May 24.
Stay tuned for our new adventure!
Dixieland funeral march scene from the James Bond movie Live and Let Die:
FROM LONELY PLANET:
History
The town of Nouvelle Orléans was founded as a French outpost in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. Early settlers arrived from France, Canada and Germany, and the French imported thousands of African slaves. The city became a central port in the slave trade; due to local laws some slaves were allowed to earn their freedom and assume an established place in the Creole community as les gens de couleur libres (free people of color).
The Spanish were largely responsible for building the French Quarter as it still looks today because fires in 1788 and 1794 decimated the earlier French architecture. The influx of Anglo Americans after the Louisiana Purchase led to an expansion of the city into the Central Business District (CBD), Garden District and Uptown. By 1840 New Orleans was the nation’s fourth-largest city, with more than
100, 000 people.
New Orleans survived the Civil War intact after an early surrender to Union forces, but the economy languished with the end of the slavery-based plantations. In the early 1900s, New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz music. Many of the speakeasies and homes of the jazz originators have been destroyed through neglect, but the cultural claim was canonized in 1994 when the NPS established the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park to celebrate the origins and evolution of America’s most widely recognized indigenous musical art form. Oil and petrochemical industries developed in the 1950s, and today, tourism is the other lifeblood of the local economy.
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