First stop in New Orleans was St Louis Cemetery, via Louis Armstrong Park. The tomb with all the Xs and offerings is Marie Laveau’s (New Orleans’ queen of voodoo) – people still use it as a votive site, though the cemetery management keep asking everyone not to add anything more to it…

After the cemetery, I headed into the French Quarter. First thing I saw when I got to Jackson Square was about a dozen guys playing jazz (they seem to be there most days).

It was pretty uncomfortable to begin with – temperatures hovering around 34C the whole time I was in town, humidity so high it was like walking through soup – but after a while I thought I was acclimatising. Unfortunately that wasn’t entirely accurate… but it took a couple of days for me to realise that.