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Introduction
Picking up from the previous posts:
New Orleans Day 1 — Chestnut’s 2021 Christmas-Year-End Mileage Run, Part 2.
New Orleans Day 2 — Chestnut’s 2021 Christmas-Year-End Mileage Run, Part 3.
On the morning of 12.28, after breakfast, we first went to Enterprise to return the car, and just like that, the day flew by!
PS: Before returning the car, I stopped at Mobil to fill up, and yet another panhandler asked me for two bucks... Seriously... do I really look that rich? I quickly tossed him two dollars and left.
WDSU TV 6 NBC New Orleans LA.
The National WWII Museum (Sorry, but I want to give it a bad review)
This WWII museum was one of the stops we had planned before coming here, but the bigger the expectations, the bigger the disappointment. That may be because Rabbit and I have already visited so many museums in the U.S. that this WWII museum just didn’t have much appeal for us.
Before this, we had already visited the USS Midway CV-41 in San Diego, the battleship USS Iowa BB-61 in Long Beach, LA, the battleship USS Missouri BB-63 at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the Lyon Air Museum next to the airport in Santa Ana, and the March Field Air Museum in Riverside. All of those museums are either exhibits in themselves, like the Midway and the two battleships, or they benefit from cheap land and lots of space, which allows for a rich collection—March Field Air Museum out in the desert, for example, even has a B-52 Stratofortress on display. By comparison, this museum in New Orleans is limited by the size of its buildings, and since many of its exhibits were donated or collected from elsewhere, the overall content inside felt pretty average.
So my recommendation is: if you plan to visit these kinds of museums, come to the New Orleans one first, and then go to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the like. Otherwise, the psychological letdown will be real.
At the entrance, I took another photo of General Robert Lee’s now-empty monument... the fate of losing a war...
Outside the WWII museum building!
Here are a few exhibits at random—a 48-star American flag.
Leaders of various countries during WWII; on the Chinese side, of course Chiang Kai-shek was included.
One characteristic of museums in the U.S. is that if there’s no need to mention Stalin, Stalin absolutely will not appear. It’s only when discussing the European theater—where the Soviet Union cannot be avoided—that they reluctantly put up the standard portrait of Stalin here.
This was something I hadn’t seen in other museums before—a German Enigma cipher machine. It probably counts as one of the museum’s signature treasures.
This machine is the three-rotor model, and the wiring below it is absolutely dizzying to look at!
Well, I was done for—couldn’t understand any of the German at all. Total illiterate mode...
Seeing this really left me saddened—American WWII museums naturally focus on highlighting their own country’s contributions during the war... But honestly, the sacrifices made by Chinese soldiers and civilians during WWII far exceeded these numbers, so why does no one mention that?
A country’s history is only cherished by its own people. If even we ourselves do not take this part of our history seriously... then it really will be forgotten...
PS: If you follow this line of thinking, then if you want to see a “Molotov cocktail,” you’d probably have to go to a museum in Finland. There’s no way the Russians would talk about something as embarrassing and disastrous for them as the Winter War.
An open-top Jeep. Didn’t feel especially remarkable.
The aircraft on display here were also limited to just a few types because of the size of the exhibition hall. Nothing much can be done about that.
New Orleans Streetcars and the Hurricane Katrina Memorial
To be honest, this WWII museum visit was not enjoyable at all: tickets were expensive, the exhibits were average, and there were simply too many visitors. You get pushed along at a walking pace you’re not used to, and it’s exhausting. If it hadn’t been for the high ticket price, Rabbit and I probably would have left much earlier.
At last, after stumbling our way through the whole visit, we decided to go ride the New Orleans streetcar. Only two lines were operating at the time—the southern line went to Tulane University, while the northern line went to the cemetery district on the west side of the city. Since we had already driven to Tulane University the day before, we decided to take the northern line instead. We just bought a Day Pass on the phone and hopped on. The interior looked like this.
After about 20min, we arrived at the terminal. Only then did I realize how fitting this car number was—2022, as if it were welcoming the New Year.
A shot of the bogie!
Across the street we suddenly spotted this shop... Are you selling hallucinogenic stuff? Herb, fly agaric, the whole package—seriously!
The sign for Cypress Grove Cemetery. The oldest grave I saw here dated to before 1850, which makes it more than 160 years old.
The people buried here probably never dreamed that many years later this place would become a tourist attraction!
This is what the style inside looks like.
This one was rather special, so I took a photo—the Chinese Benevolent Tomb.
After walking around, we came back out and also stopped by the nearby Hurricane Katrina Memorial.
After another loop around, we found that the streetcar had come back to pick us up right on time, so we hurried across the street to catch it. This time it was streetcar No. 2003, and in an instant I was transported back to my high school days (my golden age)!
The Trip Back
On the way back, we ordered a fancy cake at Emeril's.
Not long after returning to the hotel, it unexpectedly started pouring outside... I really had no idea what the weather would be like on the way to the station the next day.
Since it was raining and there was nowhere to go that evening, I might as well go play around with the Peloton machine in the gym.
Let’s end with this photo—full, content, bored, and waiting for the next day to arrive!
Stay tuned for the next post: Chestnut’s Grand U.S. Rail Journey at the End of 2021 — Amtrak Sunset Limited.
