Tuesday Afternoon: New Orleans City Park

City Park is huge, and contains a lake and large expanses of green and an train park and amusement park for kids and I'm not sure what all.  But we came especially to see the Botanical Garden and the Sculpture Park.

 This was the scene of the wedding we attended on Saturday evening.

 We had been to the botanical garden before, in November 2004, before Katrina.  At that time it was kind of tired looking.  Now it has been renewed after the damage caused by that storm, and it is better than ever. 

 Portable shade for the gardeners.  Later it might have been protection from rain. 

 I don't know what this plant is, but the blooms were wonderful.

 I am still worshiping those mighty live oaks. 

 There is a conservatory here, but most of the tropical plants just live outside. 

 What amazing color here on these ginger plants. 

 Tom is quite envious of this display of stag horn ferns.  He tried to grow one and did manage to keep it going for a couple of years, but it was never going to look like these!

 In the conservatory.

 As the afternoon progressed, the sky grew darker and darker.  We were very aware of the possibility of thunderstorms. 

 Behind the conservatory there are display planters. We were just venturing into this area when a boom of thunder and the first splats of very large rain drops sent us scrambling under an event tent near by. 

 The gardeners collected there too and we waited out the deluge, with booming and flashing going off right over our heads. 

 And then it moved on, leaving dense humidity in its wake. We puddle hopped over to the sculpture garden. 

 Modeled after a driftwood horse sculpture, this one was cast in bronze. 

 I didn't even try to remember who made what or what it was called, but I do know this is a Rodin. 

 And this is a Henry Moore. 

 And by then we were stickier and drippier than we had ever been yet, and that's saying something.  So we paid our way into the art museum, just to cool down and dry off.  It was frigid in there!

 We looked at some of the galleries, and of course I gravitated to the Impressionists, and two of my favorites, Monet and Renoir. 

After our cool down we managed to make our way back to the streetcar and to the hotel.  We went back out for some seafood, and Tom finally got his oyster po-boy.  

We spent the rest of the evening packing up and reading.  We were done, and ready to come home.