New Orleans is vile and sublime, ordinary and amazing, a glittering cliche that promises much but delivers little, or everything you ever wanted.
“You’ll only be able to stand about two days in New Orleans,” said a friend who was helping with the itinerary for our first visit to New Orleans. And by the end of Sunday, desperately seeking tranquility and a good night’s rest, this gentleman seemed a sage beyond imagining.
We had a notion for a flyaway weekend–arrive on Saturday, leave Monday morning–with the idea of getting to know the city that nobody except tourists calls the Big Easy. For these same tourists, the Sin City tag, acquired when pirates roamed the streets of what is now the French Quarter, is still in effect. You go there to parrr-tay–eat, drink and . . . ahem. So what’s a happily married, teetotaling vegetarian to do in this sprawling hamlet of contrasts?
Museum hop, for one thing. The New Orleans Museum of Art (One Collins C. Dibbell Drive; 504-488-2631; www.noma.org) is a must-see, perched at the back edge of the immense City Park in New Orleans’ Mid-City District.
The centerpiece of our weekend was “Jefferson’s America/Napoleon’s France,” a NOMA exhibition ($12; through Aug. 31) celebrating the Louisiana Purchase bicentennial. It’s also the largest exhibition in the history of the museum. After seeing the show, which looks at the Purchase, the lives of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte and how they intertwined, you realize why the French think we’re such ingrates. The $15 million Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of America. “After all we did for you . . . ,” the French must think.
But don’t forget, we learn from the exhibit, that after getting whupped in St. Domingue (today Haiti) by Toussaint L’Ouverture, Napoleon gave up on the Louisiana Territory. He also needed bucks to fight the Brits.
This well laid-out, easy to navigate exhibition, featuring works of art, furniture, documents and books, is a stunner. You get a free audio tour, with an introduction by First Lady Laura Bush, who refers to “the rich artistic dialogue between America and France.” There was no “but we hate them now” addendum.
An unspoken, but galvanizing, aspect of the exhibition is the way Native Americans kept getting hosed, beginning with LaSalle, in March of 1682, continuing through President Andrew Jackson’s “relocation” program of 1830.
There’s a “Virtual Monticello” that’s kind of cheesy, and there’s a bit too much period furniture, but overall, the show rocks. Allow at least two hours for the show, and another hour and a half for the rest of NOMA, including its good, though small, collection of contemporary and modern art. It’s worth a weekend in New Orleans. Be sure to salute the huge statue of Civil War General P.G.T. Beauregard as you enter City Park.
New Orleans’ National D-Day Museum (945 Magazine Street; 504-527-6012; www.ddaymuseum.org; $5-$10), in the Warehouse District completed our French circle (you gave us freedom and some land, we give you the same). This amazing, immense and thorough space has something for everyone from military history buffs to neophytes, plus a visible human side in the faces of the WWII veterans. During a film about the Omaha Beach landings, part of the Normandy invasion, a veteran sat quietly, crying as he watched the film and hugging his wife. Moments like this elevate the D-Day Museum from mere repository.
Be sure to visit the gaudy, but delightful Aquarium of the Americas (1 Canal Street; 800-774-7394; www.auduboninstitute.org/aoa; $6.50-$14), located by the river in the French Quarter, available as a two-fer if you wish (we did), packaged with a riverboat junket. We rode the Cajun Queen for a boring tour because time was pressing, but we also wanted to see if you could cool off in N’awlins without being blasted by air conditioning, an omnipresent feature of indoor life.
No.
People watching on Bourbon Street is the other worthwhile New Orleans pastime, an activity best summed up by a T-shirt that read:
“It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.”
This is tourist town at night, with storefronts galore, all hawking Mardi Gras beads, never mind that it was three months after the festival.
Would-be revelers, giddy with possibilities, ran toward Bourbon Street like children running to the latest roller coaster. You see them later, hunched over, clutching their guts, or wondering “Where is that good time,” as they clutch empty wallets.
Seeing your fellow man at his lustful, besotted nadir gets depressing, however, as does listening to his mating cry, a boozy “Wooooo, hoooo!”
But after the trash is picked up and the sidewalk is hosed down (literally), the French Quarter is very reminiscent of a small French town, from the architecture to the balcony planters, bursting with flora. The cobbled streets are quaint and uneven, and beauty abounds. Our favorite time in the Quarter was between the hours of 7 and 10 a.m., when early risers have the place all to themselves.
The other advantage to daylight tours is that you don’t have to worry about where you walk. New Orleans, though it is a city on the move, is also a city on the make. Not only are the innumerable bars, restaurants, businesses and sidewalk hawkers giant vacuums for tourist dollars, but street crime is still a reality in this city that has very abrupt changes from prosperous to squalid. Canal Street, the main drag, finds Bourbon Street as its dividing line. North of Bourbon, Canal descends into unsettling seaminess–the Ritz-Carlton Hotel locks its Canal Street entrance at night. South of Bourbon, it’s nouveau riche glitter.
A Harrah’s Casino beckons, from the windows of a passel of newer, fancy hotels. The oh, so upscale Shops at Canal Place feature Saks Fifth Avenue and Hermes. Behind this bustling mass is the Mississippi River, with all of its riverboats, paddlewheelers and sanitized local color, patrolled by Hospitality Rangers. During a riverboat cruise, you can see the side of New Orleans that the city wants you to see, all new and scrubbed. Even the docks are being rehabbed.
The decrepitude of the neighborhoods immediately surrounding downtown (in parts, as bland and characterless as that of any other rehabbed city) is striking. It’s still best not to wander off on your own during one of the city’s innumerable cemetery tours. At night, if you don’t see police or other people, let common sense be your guide.
Ultimately, New Orleans is a segregated city, not by race, but emphatically by color–green. Those Who Are to Be Entertained have money. Those Who Are to Entertain do not. Bourbon Street is much more welcoming if you’re green, and the Big Easy is even easier if you have money. Then, you can ignore too many locals, left on the outside looking in, and the other stuff you aren’t supposed to see. No, that’s not New Orleans, you can imagine the Tourism person crowing. This is New Orleans.
And yet, New Orleans isn’t just Bourbon Street. It’s the history of the drunk-free French Quarter, the beauty of the Esplanade, elegant Storyville the bustle of Jackson Square and the pleasant lassitude of many locals. And for a weekend, New Orleans is just enough, but also way too much to deal with.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Weekend expenses for two:
Air ……………………………………… $258
Lodging (two nights) ………………………. $262
Food …………………………………….. $236
Tours, museums, etc. ……………………….. $92
Taxis, airport shuttle, abortive car rental ….. $122
Total ……………………………………. $970
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
American and United fly non-stop to New Orleans from O’Hare; flight time is two hours. It’s possible to make the trip on other airlines (including Southwest and Continental, from Midway), but you’ll have to stop or transfer planes, which takes a lot of time out of a “flyaway weekend.”
Weekly lists of e-fares are released by the airlines on Wednesdays, usually for flights departing Saturdays (sometimes Friday evenings) and returning on the following Monday or Tuesday. But sometimes e-fares for the following weekend will be offered too.
We booked our flight on Thursday of the week prior to departure. The $129 round-trip fare was available at the American Airlines Web site, which beat anything we could find on sites like Orbitz or Expedia.
You can sign up to have the fares e-mailed to you weekly from individual airlines–American (www.aa.com) and United Airlines (www.ual.com) are the top choices for O’Hare users, while Southwest (www.southwestairlines.com) rules Midway–or you can go to www.smarterliving.com, which e-mails registered users fares from a variety of carriers.
If possible, fly into New Orleans in the morning or in the evening/night, to avoid summer’s midday heat and the afternoon thunderstorms that can cause airport delays.
LODGING
Off-season lodging is a bargain, with most hotels offering reduced rates. We got the Saint Louis (730 Bienville St., 504-581-7300), in the French Quarter, at $149 for Saturday night and $94 for Sunday, a significant savings from the rack rate of $259. All the discount hotel sites we checked were within a few dollars a night of each other; we booked through WWTE (www.wwte.com), the travel partner that links through the American Airlines Web site, for the convenience. You have to pay in advance, but you also can book tours and brunches.
GETTING AROUND
Never, and we mean never, rent a car in New Orleans. Our Mazda from Hertz included the company’s Never Lost navigation system. We knew we were in trouble when the system flashed “calculating route,” then said, “Make the first legal u-turn.” That’s computer for “We’re lost.” It told us to turn right where a concrete wall was and kept taking us to the Bourbon Orleans, even though we’d programmed in the address for the Saint Louis. We returned the car, and … took the Airport Shuttle, a $10 jaunt from the airport to our hotel. Shared seats in the van mean this isn’t the choice for misanthropes. A taxi is $28 from the airport to your hotel in downtown or the French Quarter, but once there, cabs are plentiful, and it seems no place is more than a $10 cab ride away.
DINING
New Orleans is famous for its food, and they say you can walk into any place and get a great meal. So that’s what we did. Regional cuisine and excellent, fresh seafood is the N’awlins calling card, but being vegetarian, we wondered about how we’d be able to dine in the Crescent City.
We needn’t have fretted. Bargains abound, as long as you stay clear of the touristy joints. Saturday night, we ate at Muriel’s Jackson Square (801 Chartres St.; 504-568-1885), an upscale-ish joint perfectly placed at the French Quarter’s beautiful Jackson Square and across the street from the famous Cafe du Monde. Sunday’s breakfast at the very friendly Quarter Scene (900 Dumaine; 504-522-7533) featured superlative pancakes and fresh ingredients. Sunday dinner at the Pelican Club (312 Exchange Alley; 504-523-1504) featured a quiet, elegant setting on the tranquil, four-block stretch of Exchange Alley and a vegetarian Napoleon that rocked.
ATTRACTIONS
Too many to list, really. You can tour, shop or nocturnal people-watch on Bourbon Street. You’ll want to visit the Storyville and Garden Districts, and ask your taxi driver to take you up the rapidly gentrifying Esplanade, featuring beautiful homes perched behind lush, ancient greenery.
New Orleans loves the tourist trade, so there are tours galore, from the city’s above-ground cemeteries to the area’s swamps (scoffed, one person who took it, “They just drive you around through some muddy water”).
The Creole Queen (1 Poydras, 504-529-4567), a paddlewheel boat, is nice for a Mississippi River tour though it, like much of New Orleans, is heavily touristed, even during off-season.
Jackson Square (off the 800 block of Chartres Street) is a pedestrian mall that bustles with activity. You can either stroll it, or view its freneticism from Cafe du Monde (813 Decatur St., 504-581-2914), which has excellent coffee along with its signature beignets (a square pillow-like doughnut dusted liberally with powdered sugar). It’s also one of the many gustatory bargains in New Orleans: A large hot chocolate, an order of (three) beignets and a bottle of water cost about $6.
INFORMATION
New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-672-6124; www.neworleanscvb.com or www.neworleansonline.com.
— K.W.
