New Orleans: Historic Voodoo Museum

One of the first places we wandered into on a recent trip to New Orleans was the Historic Voodoo Museum, located on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter. The museum is small, but packed and stacked with artifacts (some of questionable authenticity) relating to Louisiana voodoo, a blend of Afro-American religions brought to New Orleans by the enslaved West Africans, French, Spanish and Creole inhabitants.

I'm not a Voodoo expert by any means, but I'm fascinated by beliefs of any kind. I wasn't raised religious, so almost every type of spiritualism seems equal parts believable and far-fetched to me. There has always been something appealing to me about relics—I think it's the hoarder in me that appreciates the value and sentiment that can be attributed to stuff—so I especially loved all of the altars inside of the museum. You can't have a voodoo museum without paying homage to the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, and in addition to her own altar the museum also claims to have her kneeling bench.

Of course what I loved even more than the haphazard and dusty altars were the bones. There were pelvic bones, entire skeletons, crosses made from bones and numerous human skulls (allegedly collected from medical schools). I also really love the voodoo practice of leaving an offering—believed to expedite the prayer fulfillment process—and I couldn't resist leaving a dime inside one of the skulls (the fact that someone left a $15 Bath & Body Works gift card on one of the altars is still making me laugh). For years I've been finding dimes seemingly everywhere, and it seemed like the right time to start giving them back.

New Orleans: Pharmacy Museum

As an add-on to a tour we took on our recent trip to New Orleans, we received free admission to the Pharmacy Museum. The museum is located in the Vieux Carre Historic District of the French Quater, on Chartres Street. Louis J. Dufilho, Jr. became America's first licensed pharmacist in 1804 when Louisiana became the first state to require a licensing examination for pharmacists. Dufilho’s 1823 apothecary shop is now the Pharmacy Museum and it's an antique-medical-lover's dream.

The museum is filled with historical medical artifacts that range from the mundane to the truly bizarre. Everything is housed in beautiful wooden and glass cabinets and the physical space itself is worth the price of admission (normally $5). Immediately upon walking into the shop you feel as if you've stepped back in time.

The best part of the museum is their extensive collection of vintage medicines in bottles, boxes and tins. We could have spent days just reading the ridiculous (and beautifully designed) labels on treatments for every ailment you can imagine, from Mexican bowel pills for stomach troubles to lung balm for bronchitis to whatever it is that you use "chocolated worm syrup" to cure.

New Orleans: Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

The day after we took a tour of Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans, we were wandering around the Garden District somewhat aimlessly. When we came upon Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, I was thrilled to be able to explore a Nola cemetery without the time constraints and restrictions of a guided tour. I did see people on a tour, but unlike Saint Louis Cemetery, Lafayette is open to the public.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 was established in 1833 as a non-denominational cemetery and is home to more than 7,000 permanent residents, approximately 1,100 family tombs and at least one friendly lizard. I enjoyed our brief tour of Saint Louis Cemetery, but I fell in love with Lafayette. I have the tendency to get overwhelmed and forget about time constraints, especially in beautiful cemeteries. I easily could have spent all day at Lafayette, but I did have to meet up with the rest of our group eventually, which was probably for the best.

I feel as if we were cheated out of seeing Marie Laveau's tomb knee-deep in offerings, so I was pleased to finally get to see some proper cemetery decorations adorning many of the tombs, including fake flowers, beads (when in Nola) and various other offerings. A lot of the grave decorations that you find in modern cemeteries seem sort of cheap to me—plastic decorations, stuffed animals, resin statues—but there's something about just being in New Orleans that gives everything a voodoo / altar-like meaning that made me instantly a fan of sun-bleached flowers and beads draped over headstones.

Like Saint Louis, Lafayette is an above-ground cemetery and while it doesn't have the Nicholas Cage pedigree, it does have a tomb for the Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Sons from 1894. It was used as a filming location for Interview with a Vampire and you can even by an entire mausoleum—I'm assuming the purchase price also includes the acquisition of current residents Mildred and Bobbie?

New Orleans: Neon

The first thing I noticed while walking down Bourbon Street for the first time (on our way to the perfect Clover Grill) was the plethora of wonderful neon signs. I didn't know much about New Orleans before we went, but of course I'd heard of Bourbon Street and its 24/7 party vibe. That translates into a lot of neon—old and new, on and around Bourbon—and I loved it all.

Bourbon Street is basically the Times Square of New Orleans, but I have zero problem being unabashedly touristy when it's my first time visiting a city. Our hotel was located in the Central Business District, so to get anywhere in the French Quarter it was easiest to take a stroll down Bourbon. The street was so named to honor France's ruling family at the time, The House of Bourbon, and not because of the large concentration of bars that reside there—in fact Bourbon Street was a prime residential location prior to 1900.

After taking a storefront tour recently—where it was explained that maintaining neon signs is a very labor intensive and expensive process—I have a renewed appreciation for their beauty. From strip clubs, bars and daiquiri windows, to restaurants, pharmacies and gift shops, neon is somehow always the right choice.

New Orleans: St. Louis Cemetery No.1

St. Louis Cemetery No.1 is the oldest and most famous of the three St. Louis Roman Catholic cemeteries in New Orleans. It opened in 1798, also making it one of the oldest cemeteries I've ever toured. The cemetery is small and very compact, housing thousands of permanent residents in just one square block.

New Orleans is famous for its above-ground burials, and all of the Catholic tombs in St. Louis are above-ground. Most people think it's because of the high water table, which is only partially true. Vault and tomb burials are most likely traditions brought over from Spain, and most modern-day burials in New Orleans are done below ground.

In 2015, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was closed to visitors not accompanied by a tour guide, due to alleged vandalism. This means that you now have to pay to take a tour, which is kind of a bummer. We took a wonderful 3+ hour general tour of the French Quarter that included the cemetery, but no tour will never spend as much time in a cemetery as I would if I was on my own. I'm all for preserving the place, but I do wish I had been able to spend more time poking around.

Notable (alleged) residents include voodoo priestess Marie Laveau and notorious slave-torturer (and former resident of the now-haunted LaLaurie Mansion) Delphine LaLaurie. When the cemetery was open to the public, Marie Laveau's tomb used to be covered in offerings—which I would have loved to see—but when we went it was scrubbed clean.

Of course fact is always stranger than fiction, and it's hard not to love the fact that Nicholas Cage has already purchased a mausoleum for himself—a stark, white pyramid, that our tour guide said was frequently covered in lipstick kisses, but unfortunately it too had been recently cleaned.

I was really overwhelmed with my first foray into the New Orleans cemetery scene, and like I said, I just wish we had spent more time exploring. I had been looking forward to seeing the cemeteries and I knew they would be so unlike the ones we have up north, but they still managed to exceed my expectations. Later in the trip we stumbled upon another cemetery that we were free to roam and that satiated my cemetery obsession a bit better, but I'm hoping I have a chance to go back soon and explore them even further.

New Orleans: Clover Grill

Last weekend I accompanied six wonderful women to New Orleans to celebrate our friend Francesca's upcoming birthday. For months before we left, we rounded up tons of recommendations and made a Google map that contained far more bars, restaurants, shops, historic homes and cemeteries than we could see in three days. We did, however, manage to make quite a dent, starting with Clover Grill.

After checking in to our hotel (the brand-new and always-lovely Ace) we were ready for lunch and decided upon the Clover Grill. Clover Grill has been open 24 hours on Bourbon Street since 1934. It's tiny, and very pink inside with a row of counter stools and a few tables. I love all of the handpainted signage and the front window, which showcases diner diners in a very Edward Hopper-esque way, especially at night.

The menu is filled with puns and commentary such as "If you are not served in 5 minutes, relax, it may be another 5. This is not New York City." As any respectable diner should, they have 24-hour breakfast, but I ordered one of the "world famous" burgers and was not disappointed. I am generally wary of diner meats (bacon excluded) but I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the best burgers I've had, period. The burgers are steamed on the grill under a hubcab and topped with a slice of cheese almost as thick as the burger itself.

Our server was really helpful, nice and funny and I lost track of how many times I commented that "this place is literally perfect," or "I'm so happy right now," during our lunch. Clover Grill was the perfect start to our wonderful weekend and very much like the city itself—delicious, friendly and covered in just the right amount of grime.