This column comes to you from New Orleans, where I am taking a short break. I came with my son, who is attending a major hospitality technology conference here.
After reading today’s column it may become clear to you why I am not much in demand as a travel writer. The truth is that while there is a lot of musical talent in News Orleans, the streets on which the pubs and restaurants are located all smell of urine, sometimes to the level that you might describe as a stench.
If that is okay with you, then NOLA, as New Orleans, Louisiana likes to call itself, is the place to visit.
The tourist areas – mainly the French Quarter and Frenchman Street in the residential suburb to the east – look like large versions of Speightstown and Swan Street. The wrought iron balconies attached to simple Georgian-style houses are charming up to the first three dozen or so. Then your eyes start to glaze over.
Which is unfortunate, because there are gems upon gems of these often well-preserved and lived-in reminders of an age long past.They often have ferns and other plants adorning them as well as outdoor furniture, proving that these buildings are home to thousands of NOLA residents.
The stinky French Quarter is bordered on the west by New Orleans’ main drag, the attractive four-lane Canal Street, not built on an actual canal, but where one had been planned by the French, but never pursued.
The attractive, touristy streetcars (none of them named Desire) run north-south down the middle. (Like Manhattan, when I say north-south, it is a simplified way of saying northwest-southeast, as the city is slanted that way).
On the west side of the FQ, there is the business district, but both sides of Canal Street have the big hotel chains, and the Starbucks. We went into PJ’s, a local coffee chain which seemed identical to Starbucks, and the coffee was better.
On the east side, the FQ is bordered by Esplanade Avenue, a two-lane residential version of Canal Street, where you will find fewer of the balcony buildings, which, as in Swan Street, were mainly for commerce, with residential space upstairs for the owner’s family.
This part of town features charming small colonial homes that look like a combination of all of the influences brought to bear on New Orleans by changes in rule over the centuries – French, Spanish, British, and whatever else. They often feature huge dormer windows jutting out from some very small roofs.
Where we stayed was below the business district, in an area formerly home to all the warehouses of bygone days, when New Orleans was perhaps a much bigger shipping town. In recent decades, this area has been transformed into the Warehouse Arts District, and features smaller versions of the chain hotels, often using the footprints and actual buildings of the old warehouses.
It is a short walk from the convention centre and the casino less than a mile away, both on the Mississippi River front. Bridging the two is a long and narrow shopping mall called – you guessed it – the Riverwalk Outlet Collection, where in the spirit of things, “warehouse” prices seem to apply.
From there you can keep walking east on Peter and Decatur Streets, which merge in the centre, all the way past the magnificent St Louis Cathedral on the way to Frenchamn Street.
Behind St Louis Cathedral is the French Quarter, where retail shops selling products that pay homage to all sorts of spirits are for sale.
In one shop, quite a normal, average tourist place, a small figurine of Jesus stood next to one of the “goddess of strippers”. Next to these were all sizes of skulls with smiles of varying menace.
Tourists were told not to dare take photos inside this place because they would be “stealing the spirits.” Apparently this can wreak havoc on your iPhone.
Outside this shop, sitting on a small stool on the sidewalk, a woman was taking money for ghost and cemetery tours, aided by a man who was gathering passersby by touting the highlights in a loud voice. Opposite them, people queued up for hours to get into a jazz concert at the famed Preservation Hall.
When night falls, and the neon-lit signs are turned on, Bourbon Street looks a lot better. The cops are out in force, and (I’m told) so are young women offering personal services.
However, they dress more conservatively than one might expect, and look for work in pairs on busy street corners. A woman lying on the street at two in the morning was rolled over by a cop so her mouth would not be actually in the gutter, but she was left there. Just another drunk on Bourbon Street.
However, before midnight, despite the stink of urine that pervades the atmosphere, middle-aged, mainly white couples walk in an out of the bars which compete for business by having live bands on stage in the corner.
No one bothers you unless you want them to and the music is of a high standard, ranging from soul to blues to country and all sorts of mixtures in between.
New Orleans tour buses also offer cemetery tours. These cemeteries are above ground, and the tours are said to be spirited. You can also take boat tours that bring you near alligators, and you can pay extra to go out on a small boat to get even closer.
This runs counter to one of my life goals, which is to keep as much space as possible between myself and alligators, but I am told I am missing a lot. I think I might miss a lot more if I got too close.
This article does not cover the World War II national museum, or any other of NOLA’s museums, including outlying plantations paying homage to the slaves who worked them, as I had not visited them by deadline. If I do, expect a footnote in a later column.
Finally, it seems NOLA is the place where the homeless who have at least a smattering of musical talent go in search of work. These street musicians, the ones I heard, were terrible, and presumably could not even get gigs in the pubs nearby offering live music. Begging and searching for food in waste bins was all too evident.
By comparison, St Lawrence Gap is far cleaner, and the quality of music (although less varied, understandably) is of a much higher calibre. They say travel improves your outlook on the world. It also improves your appreciation of what you have at home.
Bottom line: For all of New Orleans’ history, architectural charm and musical talent, if any of our tourist streets in Barbados stank like they do in New Orleans we would never hear the end of it, only that our tourism industry was going to the gutter. Yet these awful conditions permeate almost all of the tourist-oriented streets of New Orleans.
