Jazzed up in New Orleans - May 2008

I cannot believe it was the weekend of May 24th 2008 that Wooley and I were in New Orleans, I have emailed everyone photos, if I did not include you in the email and you would like to check them out, let me know and I will forward them to you! 

Anyway we had a great time! My good friend Michelle as always gave us some great tips and as a result we had the best time in the best spots in New Orleans! 

We flew in on the Friday evening and our hotel was great as they have a free happy hour with snacks, so we partook of the free booze and made our way to the French Quarter. Bourbon street is the party street and it was crazy manic! Imagine Leicester Square then add the freedom to walk around with drinks, so you can actually buy drinks "to go" in the bar........add live music, heat and humidity you may have a clue....a little like 6th street in Austin (for Dhara and Deepa!).

I had the best BBQ oysters and a Cat 5 hurricane (like a Long Island Iced Tea) at a great place called the Red Fish Grill, we then went to this great pizza place and then walked over to Frenchman street where we went to this great jazz club called "Snug Harbor" (yes that's how they spell harbour in the USA) and as per Michelle luckily I had reserved two tickets, and we saw Ellis Marsails a jazz legend in such an intimate great venue it was so great! We met some lovely girls from Boston who were so funny, they told us not to judge the rest of America on our experiences in Dallas, with smiles on their faces of course :)

We loved Snug Harbor so much we went back on Sunday night and heard this fantastic young girl, Sahsha Masakowski, who, comes from an amazingly talented family her Dad and brother joined her on stage at one point! 

We did go to another jazz restaurant another night, where we heard a New Orleans style jazz band which was really fun and there were some amazing swing dancers who were so much fun too, the manager of the place was from the UK, from Nottingham, she has been in New Orleans for over 20 years! We did not get a discount though :(

We loved New Orleans, the tourist areas were unaffected by the floods back in 2005 (as the touristy areas are the old parts of town and back then they did not build on flood plains!) We walked a lot (in the heat and humidity) that really is the only way to check out the French Quarter and the Garden District. We also had a few cooling rides on the St Charles streetcar. We enjoyed some great Cajun food and yummy drinks. I had a great Pimms cocktails at the Napoleon House bar, where apparently some folk hatched a plot to liberate Napoleon from his exile, but before the plan got off the ground Napoleon died! I also managed to try some shrimp jambalaya. We joined some informative walking tours. Including one of the Garden District, where I sweated so much and nearly passed out from heat exhaustion! We walked around the St Louis No 1 cemetery and saw Lafayette cemetery, the guides were all locals and had some great insights!

We also went on a coach tour of the areas of the city affected by Hurricane Katrina. We did spend some time considering whether we should go on the tour, as we wondered if it was in bad taste? But we decided to do it otherwise we would not have learnt as much as we did. We flew in and spent all our time in the old parts of the town and so if we had not taken the tour, we would have missed out on all of that. The guide was a local and had some interesting insights. It really is shocking to see the devastated neighbourhoods that are still so abandoned after nearly 3 years, you just cant imagine this is the USA. The guide pointed out that even if someone took the little money the federal government gives you to rebuild, the insurance premiums have shot up and there are no neighbours, no grocery stores, only 60 of the 120 schools have reopened and so what are you coming back to? I spoke to a colleague at work who was hired by the Legal Aid of North West Texas to help out Katrina victims in Dallas, (many people  arrived in Dallas from New Orleans after Katrina) and she said that the town planners, architects etc could not decide how to rebuild or if they should at all in the flood plains and so the government decided not to decide. So they decided to wait a few years and if not enough people returned to certain areas they will demolish the whole area, so you could rebuild and invest and get told a few years later that not enough people moved back and then what would you do?! It really is tragic!

Having said that, New Orleans is such a great historic city the music the history, the culture etc is all so unique that I know it is a city with an amazing vitality that will survive. Jigna