One of the few places I visited on my first day in New Orleans was the St.Louis Cathedral in the middle of Jackson Square in the French Quarter. This church is a very important in terms of U.S. religious history: The site it sits on has never been without a church since 1817, making it is the oldest religious site in the United states.

It's a very beautiful cathedral, moderately ornate on the outside and exquisitely grandiose on the inside. I had the great fortune of attending a very moving Christmas Mass there and, I have to say that, the entire place reminded me so closely of the interior of Mary Queen of the World Cathedral here, in Montreal. It had soaringly, high ceilings, dark wooden pews, a sculpted pulpit, and a choir loft at the back of the church, a feature I didn't see until I was walking out of the church long after the mass was over.

They sounded amazing, that choir did. Like actual angels from on high.

Sadly, I have no pictures of the interior of St. Louis because I had forgotten my camera back at my hotel. But, this turned out to be a good thing, as this gave me the only opportunity to actually see and regard my surroundings as a true tourist. Not taking any pictures, just walking around and looking... at everything around me and taking it all in.
It was a very beautiful night, complete with fog cover and, a full moon.
Just the right touch to end my magical evening.

Pennies From Heaven

Every time I stay at a hotel I rush to see what the bathroom looks like, and
the Westin on Canal place in New Orleans was no different.
First up, it was small. Which didn't bother me.
I had just enough room in there to do what I needed to do, toilet, bath/shower, and space for towels.

It was more than enough to keep me satisfied.
Yet, despite the tiny space it somehow felt quite roomy.

Besides, I did have an outer area with a large mirror and sink that gave me ample room to move around in.
Cudos to the architect who designed this place. They definitely earned their money!
I really liked my temporary bathroom! I was very comfortable being in there, which is very important to me when reserving a hotel. But, out of everything in there the shower was the nicest treat: it had dual shower heads.

That's right, you heard me: dual shower heads.
And, God did they feel goooood...!
It was like bathing beneath some tropical waterfall, the cascading droplets falling all over you, caressing you from top to bottom. With each flow the water wrapped itself around you like the safest of all security blankets.
Some nights I didn't even want to get out of the shower...

Free Bird

Okay, this is getting out of hand..
For the umpteenth time, I'm so sorry for the long wait between post. I just got so busy with other things over the last few months.
Such as, my personal feat of miraculous proportions that I committed last December.
Well, miraculous, to me, anyway.
Last December I did something that I've always wanted to do but never got around to doing, either for one unimportant reason or another:
I took a vacation for ten days- alone.
Yeah, I know, like I said, this isn't a big deal to any of you but, to me it was a huge deal. Throughout my life I have ever only traveled with either family or friends. For whatever reason I thought it an overwhelming task to do such a thing alone. Definitely too big to tackle for one little old person, like myself..
Truth be known, I was basically scared to death that I would end up in some God forsaken place, like that river in Deliverance, hurriedly floating down it to my own squealing doom.
But, I should have had more confidence in myself (my constant Achilles heel). I did alright. I ended up exactly where I wanted to go (barring the frantic episode in Toronto's Pierson airport where I waited for almost twenty minutes in the WRONG area, almost missing my flight. If I can help it I will NEVER connect from there again..)

After months of research, my destination was New Orleans, Louisiana. The Big Easy, the birthplace of Jazz and last residence of VooDoo. The home of Jambalaya and Gumbo, Po-boy sandwiches and heavily powdered Beignets.
The city that Drew helped rebuild. The very soul of the Who Dat Nation.

The trip was a panacea for me. I needed that trip like people need air to breath and food to eat. It saved me on so many levels. It was just the medicine I needed to help me tap into that creative part of me that needed finding, that center that had been lost for longer than I cared to recognize or wanted to acknowledge.
There is something to be said about traveling by oneself. The peace that you achieve or come in contact with is like no other that you have ever experienced. It is akin to being truly in touch with oneself. To focus on that very part of you that you've been sadly neglecting.
Alright, enough pontificating..
Photographically, I made a serious misjudgement when packing my photo gear for New Orleans. Whereas I though that I was carrying too much equipment- the previous weeks I had ordered a set of Polarizing filters, macro filters, and UV and Fluorescent filters on Amazon for both my 17-85mm and my 50mm lenses- it turns out that I wasn't carrying enough gear at all. Mainly, flash cards.

With me were one 8gig card, and...one two gig card...come to think of it.. that wasn't bloody nearly enough!!! What the Hell was I thinking...?!!
Needless to say, this left me in quite the bind when I finally got down there. In the end I ended up buying two 4gig cards, two 16gig cards, and one 32gig card- almost all of them, barring the 32gig card, filled to capacity. It's cost me a small fortune to get these images off of my flash cards and onto some other peripheral. The two 16gig cards, alone, were put on five DVDs and cost me almost 60$. I dread to think what the 32gig card will cost me. In my Hasty comfort I forgot to take into account the fact that I was shooting in both Raw and jpeg, a combination which takes up quite a bit of space on one card.

As always, my first pictures of any vacation are of the clouds outside of my airplane seat window.
I am always fascinated by how they look each time that I travel. They never look the same way twice...
Normally, I shoot the same way everyone else shoots with their camera: by looking through the viewfinder. But, as the seats of an airplane are unusually confining, this time I tried shooting without looking through my view finder, to try to 'see' what I could see, so to speak.
I love shooting like this. It's like shooting with an invisible friend who is showing you their point of view, what they see through your camera. And, sadly, more often than naught, their point of view is somewhat more interesting than your own...(trust me, this is not something I want getting out...)
My next images are of my hotel room. I stayed at the Westin on Canal Place about a block from the French Quarter. It was such a beautiful place to stay. They have something called a 'heavenly' bed, and never has a bed been so rightly monikered. It was the most comfortable bed I'd ever slept on. It was like sleeping on, well... clouds.
The view from my 26th floor room was quite amazing. I had two very large windows that, each, gave me an individually grand view of the city.

On the right hand side I had an expansive view of New Orleans and the French Quarter, including, right in the middle, St. Louis Cathedral, the sight of which has never been without a church since 1817. You can see Decatur Street, one of the main arteries of the quarter branching into a 'v' and continuing to veer off on it's own well past the Jax Brewery and on past Cafe Du Monde.
Out the other window I had the most amazing view of the Mississippi River, and how extremely busy it was. Not a day went by when I didn't see something traversing that brackish waterway. It carried all manner if vessels: cruise ships, oil tankers, barges, tugboats, ferry's...you name it, it was carried by the water of 'Ole Mis'.
On the banks of the Mississippi sits the Natchez, an original paddle wheel steam boat. It takes tourists on tours up and down the Mississippi throughout the day.

For now, this is just the beginning of the images I took in New Orleans. Trust me, I went on a shooting spree the likes of which any self respecting serial sniper would be dead jealous of- no pun intended.
We shall continue this later, I promise.