St. Charles Avenue

One of life’s great pleasures is a free Saturday afternoon in an interesting place like New Orleans. It was cloudy and cool, and we were very full from a big lunch, so we decided to take a long walk down St. Charles Avenue.

There was so much to see on St. Charles - streetcars, historic mansions, spreading oak trees, and houses of worship with unusual shapes and sizes. Victorian houses alternated with modern buildings. And there were many reminders that the Mardi Gras parades had been here less than three weeks earlier.

Check out the supermarket and the public library - they fit right in!

The walk was so interesting that we lost track of the time and distance. We hadn’t considered that St. Charles Avenue is five miles long! By the time we reached Loyola and Tulane Universities, we were starting to lose steam. But we had enough energy left to walk across beautiful (and rather soggy) Audubon Park, where there was a huge (and loud!) gathering of black-bellied whistling ducks. After stopping for a few groceries on Magazine Street, we rewarded ourselves with a ride share home.