Four days in New Orleans, known locally as ‘The Big Easy’ and ‘America’s most European city’, would be our last stop in the US before heading south to Peru.
With many fellow travellers having talked up the Louisiana capital as a unique, ‘must do’ US destination, our first impression fell short of expectations.
Upon arrival it was clear the city is still showing signs of damage and disrepair from Hurricane Katrina, not to mention the constantly shifting foundations, having been built upon unstable swampland subject to constant erosion from the mighty Mississippi.
The class divide and poverty that also came to international attention during the devastating 2005 storm was further on display, with NOLA (yet another often-used nickname) having the highest concentration of homeless people, begging and sometimes bothering tourists in the street, that we’ve seen outside of Europe.
Nonetheless, it didn’t take long for NOLA’s charms to start to rub off on us.
New Orleans is renowned as a mixing pot of cultures – French, Italian, West African, Spanish and American – creating a unique ‘Creole’ culture and cuisine not found anywhere else in the world.
Nowhere is this more evident than the city’s historic centre and main tourist hub – The French quarter.
We began Day Two with a walking tour of the French Quarter and it is pretty much is as described. Rows and rows of tightly compacted European style buildings, most dating back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, lined the Quarter’s narrow streets.
The small neighbourhood is steeped in colonial history (too much to even attempt in this blog), having been owned by the French, the Spanish and then the French again, before Napoleon sold the entire southern region to Thomas Jefferson in the famous Louisiana Purchase (effectively doubling America’s territory to the US we know today).
We spent much of our four days in NOLA wandering the French Quarter, sampling its myriad of restaurants (creole and cajun), having one or two drinks on sleazy Bourbon Street, and visiting many of the Quarter’s museums and historical landmarks including a 19th century pharmacy which showed some of the pre-germ theory treatments of illness (mercury injections for your syphilis)!
On day two we snuck in a half-day tour to one of New Orlean’s best preserved plantations – Oak Alley. This early 19th century cotton and sugar plantation is famous for the massive oak trees lining its pavements.
Oak Alley offered a great insight into plantation life in early Southern America, including the challenging and often brutal conditions faced by the 150-odd slaves doing all the work.
Day three we were able to explore and learn about the other famous historical district of New Orleans. While only a few miles apart, The Garden District feels a world away from the tight streets of the French Quarter.
This is where the wealthier Americans purchased large blocks of land and built mansions in the mid 19th century when first moving into New Orleans. The homes featured all of those things the poorer European settlers considered extravagant and obnoxious, like road facing facades, sweeping galleries, big gardens and interior staircases.
Very clean and well preserved (as pretty much the only area of NOLA not to go under during Katrina), the Garden District is where Hollywood A-listers have their southern holiday homes and it’s not unusual to see houses for sale at $5m+.
A blog on New Orleans cannot forgot the jazz! Just as Nashville was full of country music and honky tonks, New Orleans is famous for its jazz and blues clubs.
We spent three nights in famous Frenchmen Street, where each venue has a different vibe and the music ranged from classical guitar jazz, electric guitar blues, jazz-rock fusion, folk and even big brass bands playing on the street corners.
Needless to say, while we couldn’t exactly see ourselves living in ‘The Big Easy’, after four days we certainly could appreciate the lifestyle and culture that NOLA is known for the world over.
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