It is hard to boil a weekend trip down to just a few words. Especially about a place like New Orleans.
New Orleans is an older city that sits in a bend of the Mississippi river, in fact one of the nicknames of the city, "the Crescent City" comes from the location of New Orleans on that bend. It was primarily a French settlement, and it is one of the few places in America where French speakers and French language things outnumber Spanish. However, what that really means is that New Orleans has a little bit of a feel of Europe while being firmly rooted in the South.
What does that mean? Well, the French Quarter is made up of town homes and tighter quarters in European fashion. Residences, commercial property, bars and restaurants all share the same space on the street. There is a lot of beautiful architecture and very ornate balconies everywhere. And while the city is showing it's age, it has a definite beauty to it. Maybe it's not age, but damage from Katrina, but I don't remember N.O. before Katrina (the last time I went there I was maybe 15) so I can't say what has changed.
But everywhere you look there is Southern Hospitality, the food and many of the drinks are Southern. The people are definitely Southern (we were at a CVS and my husband couldn't figure out what was wrong with the cashier, she was just too friendly, and I had to tell him, it's the South). And the weather was Southern. It was March and we were in shorts and sundresses!
N.O. also reminded me a lot of Austin Tx, in that in many ways it's a much bigger city than it's population would suggest. The number of restaurants that served decent food and drinks could have supported a much larger city. There were also places that were soley dedicated to one type of food, Like Beignets or Muffalatos. That is hard to find in bigger cities like DC or Houston. There were also so many musicians in N.O. almost every little place in the Quarter had live entertainment, and for cheap! In so many other places live entertainment is a rare treat, but in N.O. it was everywhere.
On our last night we made our way to Preservation Hall for some good old fashioned Jazz. For ten bucks you could listen to three hours of Jazz, if you chose. There were no frills, just the Jazz players, some fold out seats and a little lighting. But the Jazz was VERY good.
And once you get out of the quarter and view some of the old style mansions in the Garden District you almost want to move to New Orleans, until you remember that it's spring and in another month it will be a hundred degrees in the shade and you won't want to eat or even lay down because it is just TOO hot! So you go back home.
