New Orleans Getaway Part III: Dear Kids, Do As I Say – Not As I Do

Last month my husband and I went on a short trip to New Orleans.   This is Part III of our adventures in The Big Easy…

By the last day of our trip I was dying to go the graveyard (figuratively, of course). I had originally spotted the cemetery called Metarie on our drive from the airport to the hotel. And it was finally time to see (and take pictures of) the gorgeous ornate grave markers and incredible statues in Metarie.

There were no buses that went there, and we didn’t have a car. We considered renting a scooter. (This brings back memories of the time we rented one in Italy and accidentally ended up on the freeway. Twice! Because that’s how gifted we are). Okay, back to the story. The New Orleans scooter had a distance limit, so it was not an option. The only thing left to do was to take a cab there and then call a cab when we were ready to leave.  Easy, right?

Well…nothing’s ever easy – even in The Big Easy.

With my camera bag on my shoulder and a phone number in my pocket, we hopped into a taxi.

We got to the cemetery and I plowed out of the car. I heard my husband, Bert, asking the driver questions about another cemetery but thought nothing of it because I was busy digging around in my camera bag.

It turns out, we were in the cemetery NEXT to Metarie. The cab drove away. And there we were. Not at Metarie.

The WRONG cemetery.

So…my husband, the human GPS, who knew we were in the wrong place, let the cab drive away! It was only about 1000 degrees outside! We are talking instant swamp crack, People!

With no other choice, we started to walk in the unbearable heat to get to where we (okay, I) really wanted to go.

My throat was parched. A tumbleweed rolled by. And there might have been a camel or two in my heat-induced hallucinations. The sun was bouncing off all of the cement surfaces around us as we walked though this oven of an uninteresting graveyard. And when I say “we walked,” I mean I walked good 20 paces ahead of my husband. All pissed off.

That is when things changed.

I saw a man with dark hair pop out of a red sedan and snap a picture of a grave marker. As I got closer to where he was, I decided to help him out. “Hey, you know there’s a much cooler cemetery over on the other side of the interstate,” I said.

“Oh really, where is zat?” He said with an accent I thought might be French.

“Over there,” I pointed. “We are actually walking that way,” I continued as my husband caught up to me.

“Oh, well, if you want, I can drive you dere,” he said kindly.

The bubble over my husband’s head was a silent but emphatic, “NOOOOO!”

“YES! That would be fantastic!” I said, climbing into the front seat of car before my husband could decline.

His name was Luis, but to me, he will always be (cue the choir of angels!) Luis – the archangel of air-conditioning.

My husband sat behind the driver seat. He later told me this was so he could attack him if he tried to hurt me. Aw, thanks, Honey!

I had a ball learning about Luis, who is a dairy farmer from Buenos Aires, traveling all over the U.S.  Meanwhile, Bert was in the back seat emailing his co-worker a description of the car and Luis because he thought we were about to be murdered – in the cemetery  no less!

But everything was fine.

We drove all around Metarie, popping in and out of the car to snap photos. I have to tell you , it did not disappoint!

And Luis was totally harmless. Well, I mean, he didn’t kill us. In retrospect this could have been one of those famous-last-words situations.

He also was very interesting.

He was actually searching for a particular statue. He’d seen the statue of a weeping angel at a cemetery in another city (Memphis, I think) and had read that there was also one in the Metarie cemetery. We never found it, but had a great time looking.

Luis later drove us back to our hotel asking for input on other US cities he should visit. He was awesome, and in the end, Bert and I agreed this little adventure was one of the best parts of our whole trip (second only to dinner with “The Taters” (you know who you are).

And all was well, but kids if you ever read this…Please, do as I say and not as I do!

New Orleans Getaway Part I

New Orleans Getaway Part II