"Free Ferry Ride for Pedestrians" Algiers by grandmaR

The ferries go from the New Orleans side (east) on the hour and half hour. They go from the Algiers side (west) on the quarter hour and quarter of the hour.

Louis Armstrong statue

It was a nice enough day that we could ride outside, and I took some pictures. When we got off the ferry, there was a map of the area on the wall of the terminal, and outside there was a statue to Louis Armstrong.

There was a regular local bus, and a mini-bus outside to take us the four blocks to Blane Kern's Mardi Gras World (where they make the carnival floats), and he gave us a spiel on the ride. He stopped on the way and told us we could go to the Voodoo Museum and he would pick us up there. He also said we could pay to go to the cooking school.

I had gotten the impression from the talk we had Saturday that if you didn't take the tour (which the hotel guy said was boring) you could just wander around. The tour for old people was $11 each, and I thought that was way too much - I'm not that interested in Mardi Gras anyway.

One of Blaine Kern's monsters

But it turned out that you could only wander around if you paid for the tour. I didn't want to do the tour, and I particularly didn't want to pay $22 (for two of us) for it. I think Bob would have liked to do it but he didn't say.

So we paid for a cooking school lunch -$8 @. They demonstrate how to make various dishes. As a part of that, we got to go through some of the warehouse, and when the tour went by, we heard that part of it.

We were eating lunch with some of the workers, who said they paid for it too (i.e. they didn't eat free). We got a salad, some gumbo, iced tea, and some bread pudding for our $8. I went to the ladies room on the way back and that got me a peek at another room in the warehouse.

Then we walked back to the ferry dock, stopping briefly in the voodoo museum gift shop. I took pictures of some camelback houses and some other houses in the Algiers Point Historic District (1719). Then we climbed up onto the levee to walk the rest of the way. The lamp posts on the levee were all named and dedicated to someone.

Then we took the ferry back to New Orleans

• Pros:Free Ferry Ride on the Mississippi
• Cons:Mardi Gras Tourist Trap
• In a nutshell:Sleepy Village west of New Orleans