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The Tour Guide License
If you are trying to figure out the process for a tour guide license in New Orleans, like I was, you’ve probably found it to be as clear as that Mississippi River that they want you to know is 200 feet deep at Algiers Point. I wrote up my experience but I doubt it will provide any more clarity. This seems to be one of those initiation rituals that you must go through in order to be an official tour guide. Complaining about the process is required knowledge.
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Cistern Sisters
Time to wash down the muffuletta. Look to the wishing well in the center of the courtyard. Wait a minute…aren’t we below sea level? How is there a well in the French Quarter?
Apparently, there were once wells in the French Quarter.
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Little Italy Piccolo Palermo
Image courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, via Country Roads Magazine. At the end of the 19th century, many immigrants to New Orleans were from Sicily, and parts of the French Quarter became known as Little Italy or Piccolo Palermo. The changing demographics changed the culture of the Crescent City again, adding another layer to the sediment. The primary Italian immigration occurred between 1870-1930, after the Civil War and the unification of Italy, as Sicilians were considered a replacement for cheap labor after slavery was abolished and were fleeing political unrest.
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What’s in a Name?
Paul, Emma, and Berthe Camors were all born in New Orleans just before the Civil War to Eliza Reidecher and Bertrand Camors.
Eliza was born in France. In many of the accounts of the Sisters, the missing link for the Camors family is their father, Bertrand. Elusive, he died early and seems to have been lost to most historical records.
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The Mystery of the Two Sisters
The extraordinary lives of two immortal women
The Court of Two Sisters at 613 Royal Street (also 615 Royal Street, 614 Bourbon Street, and 139 Royal Street) has been a renown restaurant serving Creole cuisine in one of the largest courtyards in the French Quarter for nearly a century in a structure built almost two centuries ago.
The restaurant has few photos of the eponymous Two Sisters and only vague tales of their shop of “fancy goods” with asides about special visitors getting a glimpse of the prized courtyard, which has lead to sexy speculation about the mysterious sisters.
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Protected: Family Timeline
