History and Cuisine

Today was a very eventful day for me. First, we toured the St. Louis 1 cemetery. I was immediately surprised at just how ancient these tombs were!! The bricks were decaying and falling to the ground. The engravings had diminished into nothing and looked sad and decrepit. I learned that both very important and famous people are at rest in this cemetery. For example, although he is not dead, Nicholas Cage has purchased a rather extravagant tomb:

Another famous person who is buried in this cemetery is Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans. Since no one really knows where her remains lie, she has three tombs. I learned today that she, and many others who practiced voodoo, was a nurse and helped nurse soldiers back to health. I also learned that many medications back in the day were produced by those who practiced voodoo. It made me smile seeing the different things that people leave for her. Some of the things that people left at her grave site were bobby pins, hair clips, hair ties, cigarettes, and flowers. I noticed several x's marked all over her entire tomb like this "xxx". Our tour guide informed us that people come and as Maire for favors and when they do, they put three x's on her tomb. If their favor has been answered, that person will come back and circle their three x's. Unfortunately, I did not see any circled x's.

After the tour of the cemetery, we went on a cuisine tour. Ever since I decided to go on this trip, I told myself that I was going to try pretty much everything. So, today I tried for the first time raw shrimp, raw oyster, muffalino, a canoli, and gellato. My three favorite foods were all from one restaurant, La Divina and included the muffalina, the gellato, and the canoli. My least favorites were pretty much every thing else I ate, especially the oyster. Ew, and the shrimp.