New Orleans

As an American city, New Orleans is unusual. It's a city whose business is above all pleasure.

History

For years New Orleans was more like a city of the French Caribbean than of North America. It was founded by the French in 1718 and did not become part of the United States until 1803. New Orleans has taken elements from many cultures and created its own unique culture.

Sightseeing

The French Quarter, or Vieux Carré, was the original city of New Orleans. The beautiful homes of the Quarter - with their courtyards and patios, their high ceilings and large windows - were designed for comfort in a hot climate.

To explore New Orleans, you'll need to understand the unique system used for giving directions. Directions refer to the Mississippi: "Uptown," for example, means "upstream." So if someone tells you the place you're looking for is on the "uptown river corner" of the street, it's on the corner that is upstream and closest to the Mississippi.

Food

When you are in New Orleans, try a café au lait (coffee with milk) with a beignet, a light pastry covered with sugar.

If it's lunchtime on Monday, try red beans and rice. In New Orleans this dish is a Monday tradition. On any day of the week, try boiled crawfish, which is a small and distant relative of the lobster. Just remember, there's nothing elegant about eating crawfish - often the table will be covered with newspapers! Another specialty is gumbo, eaten as a soup or on rice as a main course. The word gumbo comes from an African word for okra, a vegetable used to thicken gumbo.

Music and Festivals

New Orleans is where jazz and the blues really got started. You'll find there are still many jazz clubs in New Orleans, for example, on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

In spring you can go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. There you'll hear everything from fiddlers to large jazz bands, from street musicians to "big names" in music. When you get hungry, you can treat yourself to local specialties, like alligator soup and crawfish pie.

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the city's most famous festival. It takes place the week before Lent, which is the period of fasting before Easter. There are many parades, organized by special groups, or "krewes." Even spectators dress in elaborate costumes. There have always been balls during Mardi Gras, and in recent years there is a costume contest, too. One grand-prize winner was a forty-foot crawfish!

Randee Falk: Spotlight on the USA; Oxford University Press, 1993, page 74 ff.