|
I've done this walk six times now, twice alone and four times with my friend
Sam, who drives when my car is being difficult. It takes all day. Everything
on it is public: squares, streets, cemeteries, a streetcar. There are no
house addresses on this page, and there never will be. People live in those
houses, including one author I could name, and the whole point of loving a
city is not treating it like a theme park.
Before you go: wear real shoes, because the sidewalks uptown are
heaved up by oak roots and the ones in the Quarter are worse. Bring water.
It's hot here until October, and some years until Thanksgiving. And no,
don't wear the cape. I have seen people try it in August. They do not look
like Lestat. They look like they're about to faint.
morning
I |
Jackson Square
Park early, before the lots fill. Start in front of St. Louis Cathedral, with
its three white spires, and the square in front of it with the statue of
Andrew Jackson on his rearing horse. The artists hang their paintings on the
iron fence, the fortune tellers set up their card tables, and somebody is
always playing a trumpet for tips. This is the heart of the old city Louis
and Lestat knew, though in their day it was the Place d'Armes. Have your
beignets across the street and get powdered sugar on everything. It's
tradition. |
| II |
Royal Street
Walk a few blocks of Royal, slowly, looking up. Wrought iron balconies with
ferns hanging off them, gas lamps, shuttered windows, courtyards you can just
see into through the carriage gates. In Interview, Louis, Lestat and
Claudia keep a town house on the Rue Royale. There's no plaque. Pick the
balcony you like best and decide it's theirs. Mine has green shutters. |
| III |
The old Ursuline Convent
On Chartres Street, a few blocks downriver from the cathedral. It's one of the
oldest buildings in the whole Mississippi Valley, from the 1750s. This one
isn't from Anne Rice, but the night ghost tours in the Quarter love to tell a
story about the young women the nuns brought over from France with their
belongings in long boxes, and what might have been in those boxes. It's a
legend. It's a good one. |
noon
IV |
Lunch
A po-boy. I'm not going to tell you where, because I'm a college student and I
eat wherever is cheapest, but The Po-Boy
Pilgrim is trying to eat one at every shop in the city and rates them on
bread, filling and mess, so ask him. |
| V |
The St. Charles streetcar
Walk up to Canal Street and catch the green streetcar uptown on St. Charles
Avenue. Bring exact change. Sit on the right side going uptown if you can,
open the window, and watch the city change from shops to mansions under a
tunnel of live oaks with Mardi Gras beads still caught in the branches from
last spring. This is the best ride in Louisiana and it costs about a dollar.
Get off at Washington Avenue. |
afternoon
VI |
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
A couple of blocks toward the river from St. Charles on Washington Avenue,
behind a white wall. Rows of whitewashed tombs above the ground, because the
water table here is so high, some of them crumbling, ferns growing out of the
cracks, iron gates rusted shut. It's where the Mayfairs keep their family
tomb in The Witching Hour. Walk the aisles quietly. Families still
bury their people here and still come to visit, so be respectful, and don't
climb on anything. Please go in daylight and go with a friend or a
tour. The cemeteries are beautiful and they are not places to wander alone. |
| VII |
The Garden District
Now just walk. The blocks around the cemetery are the Garden District, and
it's all here: the big old houses behind iron fences cast to look like
cornstalks and vines, the deep porches, magnolias as tall as the rooftops,
crape myrtles, banana trees, and the brick sidewalks buckled up like waves.
This is the world of The Witching Hour. Take your time. You will pick
out your own Mayfair house, and if you've read carefully you may even pick
out the real one.
A word of manners. Anne Rice lives in this neighborhood, and so do a lot
of other people who never asked to be part of anybody's tour. If you find
yourself in front of her house, admire it from the sidewalk and keep walking.
Don't ring the bell, don't leave notes on the gate, don't photograph the
windows. She has given us all a great deal. The least we can do is let her
have her front yard. |
dusk
VIII |
The river
Streetcar back downtown, walk to the Moonwalk on the levee behind Jackson
Square, and sit on the steps and watch the Mississippi go by, wide and brown
and fast, while the sky goes purple and the lights come on across the water.
The cathedral bells ring. Somebody's playing a saxophone. This is the moment
I make the whole drive for. Then go home, or don't, and read a chapter of
Interview before bed. |
If you have a car and another day
Oak Alley Plantation, out on the River Road, about an hour upriver
from the city. Twenty-eight live oaks, centuries old, in two rows from the
river to the big house, meeting overhead. This is where they filmed Louis's
plantation for the movie, and walking down that alley is like walking into
the first chapter. Go on a weekday. Bring Sam, or someone like her, who will
not mind when you get quiet.
A Sunday in town? Then follow a second line. Charmaine's page,
Second-Line Sundays, explains what a
second line is, how to follow one politely, and has a calendar of this fall's
Sunday parades. It has nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with
why I love this city.
back to the main page • the books, in order
|
GeoCities.us
» BourbonStreet » Quarter
