CITY BREAK: New Orleans is a relaxed southern city where the jazz isn't great but the drinks are. Creole accents and voodoo are everywhere and you can take a tour of destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, writes
ARTHUR DEENY
EVER SINCE Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans has been famous for bad storms, bad planning and bad luck. For centuries before that, however, the Crescent City that curves around the Mississippi had altogether different notorieties. From pirate’s lair to the epitome of southern gentility and from being the cradle of genius to the haunt of voodoo, New Orleans has earned many reputations and you can enjoy them all in a weekend on the wild side.
The first thing to stay about New Orleans is that it is still there. The shady avenues of Greek revival homes in the Garden City area, the ranks of mausoleums in Lafayette Cemetery and the galleried alleys of the French Quarter are all as they were before Katrina swept through, and still ready to yield up their offbeat charms. Best of all, you can find a lot of it in a leisurely stroll or on a streetcar ride for “a buck and a quarter”.
New Orleans is a relaxed southern city and it is easy to feel well dressed there, since so many of your fellow visitors will be Americans, who prize comfort above all else when it comes to choosing trousers. Dayglo sun visors and check shorts are de rigueur among some seniors, while the younger crowd will generally be wearing beer. The US is by and large an abstemious place, but they try to make up for it in the Big Easy, where you can legally smoke in a bar and drink on the street and college kids go wild for a necklace of beads.
In some kind of homage to the way the country was swindled out of its original inhabitants, the city is awash with beads. Every souvenir shop sells them and the oak trees and overhead trolley lines are draped in them to an impossible height. At Mardi Gras people on the highest floats in the parade stretch to loop beads around cables, branches and poles. For the rest of the year the stately boughs look like the aftermath of some wild party held by 10ft tall duchesses, rampaging through the suburbs in their pearls.
Young women who wear beads in New Orleans during spring break are presumed to have been awarded them in return for displaying their assets, so I wouldn’t if I were you.
From the many Francophone words to the memorials of the revolutionary Marquis de Lafayette, New Orleans wears its French origins with pride. However, the Ursuline Convent is the only remaining building in the French Colonial style, and almost all the French Quarter was rebuilt in the later Spanish Colonial style, after two terrible fires. There are terraces of Creole Cottages and Shotgun Houses. The latter are so called because their rooms are laid out in a straight line, though of course only an American would test their symmetry with gunfire.
At street corners you can hear the lads gossiping in Creole patois that clearly displays its Gallic roots. Even that most characteristic American expression “y’all” seems to me to be a relic of the French habit of addressing all but the most intimate acquaintances as “vous”.
The characteristic ironwork balconies or galleries in the French Quarter were added in the mid-19th century. Whatever about their historicity, they lend charm and much needed shade, and some boast orange and lemon trees growing succulently in pots. All are wisely slanted to permit the rain to run off. So if you sit on the outside gallery of the Royal House restaurant, for instance, you will feel like your cocktails have thrown you off balance before you take the first sip of Sazerac, “the oldest cocktail in the world”.
They are proud of their cocktails and Pat O’Briens bar on Bourbon Street boasts of being the home of the Hurricane. There aren’t many dry martinis in the sweet south. They like their drinks like their afternoons, long, juicy and easy to enjoy.
Louis Armstrong, the greatest horn blower the world has ever known, is commemorated here in the Louis Armstrong House Museum, although the actual house where he was born was demolished long ago. There’s a lot of jazz about, but not much that’s the greatest of anything. You can hear rambunctious good ol’ boys blowing ragtime on Frenchman Street, some Caribbean reggae and a certain amount of hard rock, but it’s all just for fun.
The best band we heard were a group of local buskers outside the St Louis Cathedral, with a drummer wearing a towel on his head, for no particular reason, a battered tuba, two talented trombones and a gentle sax.
Don’t go to Bourbon Street for jazz. Just go there if you feel like getting into the kind of state where going to a strip joint seems like an hilarious idea. But the rest of the French quarter is funky enough and filled with shops, fine art galleries, fancy restaurants and likeable bars. It’s the most heavily policed group of streets I have ever been on, and I’m including Belfast in my comparisons, so I suspect you’d have to be plain stupid, or totally confused by Bourbon Street, to get yourself into trouble. Everyone we met was friendly in a non-pushy, relaxed kind of way.
The reason fortune tellers lurk at every corner, toasting their tarot cards with matches, is because Creole culture has long been associated with voodoo. Originally a Spanish word used to describe French settlers, the term Creole became a term for the rainbow of French, American and African people, including descendants of freed slaves, who share the use of the Creole dialect. Napoleon’s Josephine was a Creole, as was Rochester’s mad wife in Jane Eyre, and some have dabbled in voodoo practices and the casting of magical spells, using “gris gris” dolls. Today, real voodoo worshippers leave flowers at the grave of Marie Faveau, the greatest of all voodoo queens.
There are tours of every kind, including cemetery and voodoo tours, in search of the unquiet dead and, for those who really seek the heart of darkness, tours of the destruction wrought by Katrina. These are not obligatory. Make your own tour on a streetcar (though, sadly for Tennessee Williams fans, they no longer go to Desire). A journey only costs $1.25 (€0.93) or you can loaf around the parks, slouching through the humidity on your way to the next bar, where ceiling fans are a necessity in the heat.
Discover how many tombs in the cemeteries show both German and Irish names. Apparently the two communities intermarried a good deal. The locals claim that they shared a love for potatoes and beer.
There is much to celebrate about the Crescent City, and if it’s maybe not quite as scary as they’d have you believe, its laid-back charm and air of bohemian rascality can still cast a spell of sorts on every visitor. Y’all have a nice day now.
NEW ORLEANS: Where to . . .
STAY
Value:Sun Suites of New Orleans, 1101 Manhattan Blvd, Harvey, 001-504-3659676, sunsuites.com. Across the Mississippi from the best part of the Crescent City, near the area known as Algiers, you can get a room for the night with Wifi from only €36, and catch a ferry for buttons as a foot passenger. No aircon, though.
Midmarket:Lafayette Hotel. 600 Saint Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA, 001-504-8585577, lafayettehotelneworleans.com. We got a luxurious suite for €60 a night without breakfast. Brilliant. Charming staff. Cool bar. Nice restaurant, overlooking Lafayette Square. I have no idea why it's so cheap.
Upmarket:Hotel Monteleone. 214 Royal St, 001-504-5233341, hotelmonteleone.com. This hotel is in the heart of the French Quarter. If Scarlett O'Hara ran a hotel in New Orleans this is what it would be like. All the grandeur of the old south with modern conveniences and a pool. Double room with breakfast from €260.
EAT
Value:Johnny's PoBoys 511 St Louis St, 001-504- 5248129. A genuine New Orleans tradition, the Po Boy is a humble meat sandwich in a long roll. At Johnny PoBoys you can have just about anything in yours, including Alligator sausage, for less than €10.
Midmarket: The Royal House. Royal Street, 001-504- 5282601. Americans know how to cook lobster and we had a fabulous DIY meal there. With judicious use of pincers and forks we hauled in delicious buttery lobster, snowcrab, shrimp and mussels, as we drank cocktails on the balcony. The Whaler Platter for two is just €50. Upmarket: K-Paul 416 Chartres St, 001-504-5962530. A Crescent City institution. The gumbo soup is magnificent. The Jambalaya is a less sensational stew. It's always busy, though never cheap, so be sure to book. Mains start at €25 and expect to spend €75 a head.
SHOP
Apart from beads and booze, what they’re mostly selling is art, contemporary American of course, but there are French artists on display, some of them genuine master works by famous impressionists and post- impressionists. Browse and dream and say hi to Rose in Piccadilly, a dusty old store of random collectables.
PARTY
Head to Frenchmen St where you might spy celebs slumming it in clubs like El Matador, 504 Esplanade Avenue, 504-5698361. We had a laugh in the Apple Barrel, 609 Frenchmen Street, 504-9499399, the Blue Nile, 534 Frenchmen Street, 504-9482583 and DBA, 618 Frenchmen Street, 504-9423731