Mid City

Mid city New Orleans, Louisiana offers something for all tourists, be it shops. restaurants or walking tours. However, the biggest historical attractions of mid city New Orleans would have to be its "Cities of the Dead" as its cemetaries are called. The cemetaries feature vaulted crypts. This is true for two reasons. First, New Orleans is actually below sea level, and even with vaulted crypts, there are occasionally caskets that wash away during heavy rains. Second, vaulted crypts were tradional with the French and Spanish, and these are the first people to settle New Orleans. You must take in Metairie Cemetary, built on the old Metairie Race Course. It was founded in 1872 to entomb victims of the Yellow Fever. This was also the original resting place of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Even older is Cypress Grove Cemetary, founded in 1840, and Odd Fellows Rest founded in 1849. In these two as well as the first, you can find gravesites for politicians, pirates and voodoo worshipers mixed with the best and worst of New Orleans past society. Architecture among the vaults is varied. You can find barrel-vaulted, pitched roof and sarcophogus types of achitechture as well as many other types among the crypts. After a day touring the cemetaries of mid city New Orleans, you are bound to be hungry. Right in the immediate area you can have your choice of Jamaican, Italian, Vietnamese, African along with other types of cuisine for a true international variety.