Big Easy casts its voodoo spell
Cajun food, jazz, Mardi Gras entice us to New Orleans
St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 is just one of the many New Orleans cemeteries and other attractions where one begins to understand the charms and challenges of this mysterious and utterly irresistible city.
The crypts and mausoleums are all above-ground, because when you are surrounded by water, by vast Lake Pontchartrain and the mighty Mississippi, not to mention the swamps and bayous that filigree their way from the Gulf of Mexico throughout much of the Southern U.S. state of Louisiana, you quickly become conversant in the language of water tables.
Cemeteries in New Orleans, though, are more about the living than the dead, for they are destinations where families gather, where the final resting places are ornate and grandiose, built of marble and granite and bearing inscriptions that trace the generations who lived and died here.
If this is a world-renowned destination famous for its Mardi Gras party spirit, for its indigenous and fusion food, its hurricane-battered stoicism, its jazz roots, its gator-and snake-infested swamps and its Southern charm it’s easy to see why one simply cannot take it all in on the first go-round.
First of all, be prepared for the sensuality of New Orleans, for the moisture and the heat, for the sweet smell of decay and the eerie quiet of the swamp, for the spicy and aromatic cuisine, the air of naughtiness, the costume culture and the ghostly Spanish moss that hangs like delicate lace from the branches of the ancient live oaks that line the streets.
Colonized in the 1700s by the French, later the Spanish and settled by the African slaves who came to work in the cities and on the plantations, it was the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, which was the sale of the resource-rich territory of Louisiana by the French to the United States for $15 million, that found American opportunists from the north making their way south.
That confluence of cultures turned New Orleans into a city where voodoo queens, aristocrats and business barons shared the streets and parlours, where the food, entertainment and customs began to overlap and where that melding of tradition and economic standing created a metropolis that today offers not only an abundance of that legendary southern charm but also layers of American history.
Yes, its history will fascinate, but remember that you’re in New Orleans to have fun, too. Which brings us to Bourbon Street, which shouldn’t be missed. Every night, Bourbon is party central as hundreds of drunken 20-somethings throw cheap strands of colourful beads from wrought-iron balconies to pretty girls on the cobblestones below, where bosoms are flashed and neon lights burn bright.
And wandering off Bourbon, early in the morning when the sidewalks are getting a scrub, you’ll find a quaint residential community of tiny Creole cottages built of cypress wood with rainbow shutters of green, blue, pink, yellow and orange.
So don’t be afraid to be a tourist. Head for the Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter for those famous beignets. Take a paddlewheeler ride on the Mississippi. Hop a noisy airboat through the bayou. Tour an urban cemetery.
And eat everything in sight, especially the authentic Cajun, Creole and, yes, redneck cuisine.
Most of all, though, be prepared for the joie de vivre of New Orleans.