Getting to spend 72 hours in New Orleans feels simultaneously like winning the lottery and being cheated out of your last dollar. Three days is nowhere near enough time to experience this banquet of delights but getting just a taste is certainly better than nothing.
Out of all the cities and towns in the US, New Orleans might just feel the least American. It's such a mishmash of cultures and influences. One moment, you could be gawking at a gang of three-wheeler Polaris Slingshots drag racing from traffic light to traffic light, the next find yourself in the middle of a parade of Mardi Gras floats with Italian mafia types booming Louis Prima classics and throwing red, white and green beads into the crowd ... that would be a normal day.
And that's a true story. I did see all that along with big brass bands in the street; crawfish by the dozen served in steel pans; revellers quaffing Hurricane cocktails while they danced under filigree balconies; and skeletons in top hats having tea parties on French Quarter porches.
THE MUSIC
New Orleans is a city woven together by the threads of the people who've shaped its soul, from the French settlers who founded La Nouvelle-Orléans in 1718 to the African slaves who infused it with music to the Caribbean traders who brought the air of the exotic. It's a city born of the fire of pioneers from foreign lands, the mighty water of the Mississippi, the magic of voodoo and, above all, the music.
In 72 hours, the challenge isn't finding the music, it's choosing which heady melody to follow. Music is everywhere. It feels inevitable, like the humidity hanging in the air. It follows you down neon-lit Bourbon Street with its myriad jazz bars and honky-tonks and escapes from speakeasies down narrow alleyways to tempt you inside.
Before we'd even checked into our hotel, we hit the French Quarter, an ancient, romantic mess of a place. It’s as if someone decided to throw a party, invited everyone and never bothered to clean up or switch off the music. This part of the city, the part that tourists come for, has its own rhythm, and like the jazz bands that spill onto the streets, you learn to follow its cues, not knowing where they'll take you, but knowing that you'll have a predictably unpredictable and wonderful time.
Ambling down Bourbon Street in the midday sun, we poked our heads into Preservation Hall, a legendary venue where the sounds of traditional New Orleans jazz still fill the air. The sound of horns, drums and trumpets encircled us and soon we were swinging our hips. If we'd had weeks to explore, we'd have stayed to dance into the night. But we walked out and past tempting bars and music lounges — Jean Lafitte's Old Absinthe House; The Famous Door; Boot Scootin' Rodeo; Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar. But the sound of piano keys and a raspy, Louis Armstrong-esque voice singing were too much to resist at Fritzel's European Jazz Pub. Established in 1969, it is the oldest operating jazz club in New Orleans.
We ordered drinks and whiled away the afternoon listening to Dr John and Harry Connick Jnr classics. There was more musical fun to be had later that night on Frenchmen Street, where the locals meet, and neighbouring Marigny, a suburb where the music feels younger, looser. We made it a night to not remember in the most unforgettable way.
THE FOOD AND DRINK
If music is the heartbeat of New Orleans, then food and drink are its soul. Eating in the Big Easy isn't about sustenance, it's about seduction and wild abandon. You can't count calories here. It's an ode to celebration, ceremony and storytelling. We started the day with coffee and beignets, powdery, pillowy squares of fried dough and the city’s edible love letter to its French heritage. We also tried grits, biscuits and gravy and crabmeat cheesecake (not what you think). Each dish is a messy love child of cultures: French finesse, African spice, Spanish soul and a liberal helping of Southern swagger.
For lunch, we ate gumbo, a rich, dark swamp of a stew, part soup, part spiritual experience, made with a roux so deep it hid secrets. Then we had shrimp, crab and andouille sausage sunk into okra-thickened depths of filé powder, a traditional Cajun seasoning made from the ground leaves of the sassafras tree.
We couldn't leave without tasting jambalaya — a riotous rice dish, redolent with tomatoes, peppers and smoky meat, paella’s louder, more raucous cousin — and crayfish, boiled in peppery, citrus-spiked water, served by the bucket and eaten with hands.
We drank at breakfast, as one does in New Orleans, Mimosas or okra-spiked Bloody Marys and had Sazeracs at lunch, a fiery, bitter concoction of rye whiskey, absinthe and Peychaud’s Bitters, which tastes like a shot of New Orleans itself — burnt, sweet, and dangerous. At night, the Hurricane comes out, a sweet concoction of rum, lemon juice and fassionola, a type of syrup. Somehow you manage to have another one.
EVERYTHING ELSE
If architecture is a language, the French Quarter speaks in slurred, flirtatious whispers of baroque Creole. Its balconies and balustrades, covered in rust, roses and peeling pastel paint, are like a hallucination of a voodoo-possessed artist — there's too much ornament, too many colours, too little logic — but it's so seductive and beautiful that you want to stay forever. Everything leans askew, like the buildings have been drinking and the whole quarter is immersed in an architectural hangover.
In Marigny, Shotgun houses are the order of the day — long, thin, clapboard homes that stretch back endlessly, each one painted like an Easter egg on acid. A little further, in Bywater, the aesthetic descends into full-blown whimsy. We saw riotous mosaics covering the front of a bakery, a house painted entirely in leopard print and another wrapped in old bicycle parts.
Each afternoon, walking back to the hotel along the Mississippi River to change for the evening, we saw the Natchez steamboat taking its load of tourists down the river, its paddlewheel churning in time to the steam-powered calliope.
On our last day, we chatted to a group of women going on a swamp tour for their hen party — off to where alligators lurk and the flat-bottomed boat is captained by a man with three teeth and a weather-beaten face like a fried catfish. Oh how my heart longed for another three days there.
