Three days in New Orleans showed me that not every US-American city is structured exactly the same and it is next to San Diego and Austin one of my favourite places I've got to know so far. My accommodation with my host Charles in the French Quarter in the heart of the historic quarter certainly contributed to this.
I took a Flixbus for less than 10$ from Houston to New Orleans and had a pleasant half-day trip, heading approx. 350 miles eastwards. Never in my life have I seen bridges so long. Miles and miles of roads are built on concrete piles in the southern states of America to overcome the large distances which are (temporarily) flooded. Some of the roads I passed were still underneath the water from the tropical storm which had hit parts of Texas and Louisiana one week earlier. I was actually very lucky that this road had just opened again and the bus route was available. Whilst waiting for the bus, which was delayed by more than one hour, I found out that other customers had been waiting up to five days to take this route. Some of them had shown up every morning at the bus stop and waited for several hours as they didn't know what was going on.
The French Quarter is the historic center of New Orleans, best known for its vibrant nightlife and colourful houses with cast-iron balconies. I was lucky that my host Charles lives directly in this fascinating and vivid neighbourhood. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine (e.g. Creole cuisine, Cajun cuisine) and is perhaps the most clearly recognized regional cuisine in the United States. Although I'm usually into trying all the local dishes that exist I didn't try a lot of local food in New Orleans. One reason for that was that my host Charles is a chef himself and I was lucky that he cooked something the first evening of my stay. Another day I decided to cook dinner as Charles always appreciates when Couchsurfers share new recipies with him. Unfortunately I didn't find any real Bavarian or German ingredients at the grocery store we went to so I decided to cook something completely different. I grabbed randomly stuff in the supermarket which looked good and made up a new recipe in my mind whilst shopping and let it become reality in Charles' kitchen.
Bourbon Street is probably the most famous street in New Orleans. It stretches 13 blocks from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue and is famous for its many bars and strip clubs. Neon lights illuminate the entrances of many places and in the evening hours it gets always crowded here. Whilst Bourbon St. is very touristic there is a second street, Frenchmen Street, which is more famous amongst locals and somewhat calmer. On both roads as well as side streets you can find live music bands playing all kinds of music. Jazz is one of the most typcial genres and it's said that New Orleans is even the birthplace of jazz. But also other genres like rock, blues and electronical music can be found. Most bands are playing inside the bars but as the weather is perfectly comfortable at this time of the year in the evening hours you can just stand at the window and listen and watch. Furthermore many bands play at street corners or public squares. Unlike most other cities in the USA public drinking is allowed all over the city. That's why especially in the two mentioned streets you can see crowds of people strolling from bar to bar carrying plastic cups of all kinds and forms in their hands.
The French Quarter is located directly next to the Mississippi river, a 3,778 kilometre long river that springs from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota and flows into the Gulf of Mexico about 160 kilometres south of New Orleans. The promenade along the shore attracts numerous visitors, especially in the evening hours to take a ride on one of the steamboats, stroll along the river or just sit on the steps watching all kinds of ships go by and listening to, of course, live music. The St. Louis Cathedral, one of the most prominent buildings of the city, is just a few walking minutes away. Unfortunately I was never able to enter it as the opening hours are very short, one time I went there too early in the morning and several times it was already after 4 pm and the cathedral was closed again.
New Orleans is definitely a city which stays awake at night, or even wakes up. During the day the streets were empty for the most part whilst in the evening hours everything gets busy. There are a lot of places which are said to be haunted and various travel agencies offer ghost tours around the city at night. Furthermore there are dozens of Voodoo shops. Voodoo came to New Orleans in the early 1700s through slaves from western Africa. Voodoo was then mixed with the Catholicism and became a Voodoo-Catholicism hybrid sometimes referred to as New Orleans / Luisiana Voodoo.
Especially the French Quarter embodies a very traditional architecture style. Most striking are the many gas lamps and the balconies. Originally the only source of light during the night, nowadays the gas lanterns burn 24 hours a day in many streets of New Orleans. The balconies were originally highly beneficial and used a lot during the hot summer months to spend the lunchtime hours under the shade of the wooden structure and having some fresh breeze that blew through the streets. As almost every house is equipped with air conditioning nowadays this advantage doesn't get people on the balconies anymore. Nevertheless you get some shade as a pedestrian walking in the narrow street when the sun is very high.
New Orleans doesn't sleep though and also embodies a very open LGBT culture. Especially the French Quarter is also known to have a very large homosexual community, everybody is welcome here, no matter which gender, sexual orientation, colour, religion or political position. New Orleans is also home to a wide variety of sporting events. The most famous teams of the city are the New Orleans Saints (NFL) and the New Orleans Pelicans (NBA).
Everybody remembers the effects of hurricane Katrina which hit the city on the 29th of August 2005. 80% of the city was flooded within just two days. The failure of dams and floodwalls is considered to be amongst the worst engineering disasters in the history of the USA. The famous French Quarter and Garden District though escaped the floods as these areas are above sea level (just approx. 3 feet). Although our knowledge about climate change, rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather serves as a clear indicater that situations like that might occur again in the future, the boom of the city continues and it attracts more and more tourists who want to feel the charme of Luisiana nevertheless. The hope remains that engineers and maintenance staff will provide better service in the future.
The Art District of New Orleans invites to visit a variety of museums like the National World War II Museum, Louisiana’s Civil War Museum, The Children’s Museum and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Especially the World War II Museum is considered as one of the most popular attractions in New Orleans which attracted millions of visitors so far due to war veterans who answer questions and give tours.
The streets of the charming Garden District are shaded by old oak trees. From single-storey cottages to the magnificent historic villas and lush gardens they offer not only a colourful mix of residential buildings but also cafes, restaurants, bars, boutiques and antiques shops. Magazine Street is the most famous road of the neighbourhood where I had a delicious lunch in a middle-eastern cafe. I spent a couple of hours walking around the Garden District before taking a bus back to the French Quarter.
Louis Armstrong Park borders the French Quarter and contains numerous sculptures representing the music scene of New Orleans. The park was built in honor of New Orleans' most famous son, Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter, singer and actor. Furthermore the park includes the New Orleans Municipal Auditorium, the Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts as well as the Congo Square, the former meeting place of the slaves in Spanish colonial times and afterwards, who used to dance there on Sundays.
New Orleans is world famous for the unique way in which we bury our dead in aboveground cemeteries in elaborate marble chambers. The cause of this fact: The burial of the dead in a place built below sea level was a problem faced by the first inhabitants of the French settlement that became New Orleans. There are various iconic cemeteries in different neighbourhoods of the city which can be explored and admired. I went to the St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 in the Fairgrounds district.
The City Park of New Orleans reaches approximately twice the size of the Central Park in NYC and holds the world's largest collection of mature live oak trees, some older than 600 years. In its south-east there is the Museum of Art, besides it is home to a golf course, festival grounds, historic structures, a water park, various trails and much more. I just discovered a very small portion of the park. Next to other places within New Orleans you can also find NOLA300 signs here, which have been placed at different locations on the occasion of the Tricentennial Celebration of the city foundation in 2018.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden occupies approximately eleven acres in City Park adjacent to the museum. Conceived in 2003, it doubled in size this year. Instead of taking boring pictures of the sculptures itself, which have presumably already been photographed a thousand times, I tried to capture myself with some of the elements using the self-timer.
On my last evening in New Orleans I met up with Couchsurfer Indy who showed me the Beignets, square deep fried pieces of dough topped with an
incredible amount of powdered sugar. They are served warm and tasted delicious although I spread most of the sugar in my beard, on the plate, table and floor before eating them. I really
appreciated exploring some part of the New Orleans culture with Indy as I had been running around alone most of the days here in comparison to other places I've visited. All in all I had a
wonderful stay in New Orleans with excellent acquaintances, tasty food and great impressions of this fascinating city.
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