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152<br />
CHAPTER 5 . SIGHTS TO SEE & PLACES TO BE<br />
St. Louis No. 3 Conveniently located next to the Fair Grounds<br />
racetrack (home of the Jazz Fest), St. Louis No. 3 was built on top<br />
of a former graveyard for lepers. Storyville photographer E. J. Bellocq<br />
lies here. The Esplanade Avenue bus will bring you here.<br />
3421 Esplanade Ave.<br />
5 Organized Tours<br />
IN THE FRENCH QUARTER<br />
Historic <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong> Tours (& 504/947-2120; www.<br />
tourneworleans.com) is the place to go for authenticity rather than<br />
sensationalism. Here, the tour guides are carefully chosen for their<br />
combination of knowledge and entertaining manner, and we cannot<br />
recommend the guides or the tours highly enough. The daily French<br />
Quarter tours are the best straightforward, nonspecialized walking<br />
tours of this neighborhood. They also offer a Voodoo tour, a<br />
Haunted tour, and a Garden District tour. Costs for all tours are<br />
$15 adults, $13 students and seniors with ID, $7 children ages 6 to<br />
12, and free for children under 6.<br />
The Bienville Foundation , run by Roberts Batson (& 504/<br />
945-6789; info@decafest.org; www.decafest.org), offers a live-onstage<br />
Scandal Tour entitled “Amazing Place, This <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong>,”<br />
and a highly popular and recommended Gay Heritage Tour. The<br />
tours last roughly 2 1 ⁄2 hours and generally cost $20 per person.<br />
Times and departure locations also change seasonally, so call or<br />
e-mail to find out what’s happening when.<br />
Kenneth Holdrich, a professor of American literature at the University<br />
of <strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong>, runs Heritage Literary Tours , 732<br />
Frenchmen St. (& 504/949-9805). Aside from his considerable<br />
academic credentials, he knew both Tennessee Williams and the<br />
mother of John Kennedy Toole. In addition to a general tour about<br />
the considerable literary legacy of the French Quarter, some tours,<br />
arranged in advance, can be designed around a specific author, like<br />
the Tennessee Williams tour. The narratives are full of facts both literary<br />
and historical, are loaded with anecdotes, and are often downright<br />
humorous. Group tours ($20 per person for adults) can be<br />
“scheduled for your convenience.”<br />
BEYOND THE FRENCH QUARTER<br />
Author Robert Florence (who has written two excellent books about<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>Orleans</strong> cemeteries) loves his work, and his Historic <strong>New</strong>
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