New Orleans

On the bayou the alligators stayed under the water, and the trees did the opposite, old ones leaning so far out that their branches spilled over the backwaters. New Orleans is ringed by swamp and bayou, and most of the city sits at or below sea level, kept dry by levees, canals and pumps. A trip out by hovercraft, to see what they are keeping out, earns its place in even two days here.

Back in the city, the thing to find is music. Make it blues, in one of the many small independent venues, with a drink in the afternoon and something soulful on while the rest of the day waits outside. Bourbon Street has the crowds after dark. Frenchmen Street, in Marigny and Bywater, has the jazz and brass bands.

We also took a streetcar out to one of the old residential districts, to walk its tree-lined streets and look up at the ornate fronts of the mansions. Which district it was, we can no longer say. Anyone repeating the trip could do worse than the St Charles Avenue line, the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, which runs from Canal Street through the Garden District and Uptown to Audubon Park. That is where the Greek Revival mansions stand under the live oaks, which is close enough to what we remember.

We went in mid-October, which is when to go. The heat and humidity have eased by then, and hurricane season, though it runs to the end of November, is past its peak in August and September. Spring has Jazz Fest and the French Quarter Festival, and the biggest crowds and highest rates outside Mardi Gras to go with them. The city is not large, and everything was in reach from where we stayed, so which area to sleep in matters less than the map suggests.

Food is much of why people come, and the Southern cooking lives up to it. Café du Monde in the French Quarter serves beignets with café au lait around the clock, so there is no wrong hour for them. We had a crawfish boil too, at a place whose name has not stayed with us, and it was all right. Crawfish season is in the spring.