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New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans - The people are friendly and ready
to please, down home, casual and love their Cajun
roots and food. On a whole, it is a very casual
town, which warrants flat shoes to walk the streets
of the city. Music and smells of etoufee, fried
shrimp, gumbo, beer, and frozen daiquiris emanate
from every bar and restaurant that you walk by on
Bourbon Street and many of the side streets as well.
There is food to please all – French (of course),
Cajun, Seafood, Steak, and much more. We even stopped
and had Greek food one night. You’ll find large
groups of people lined up on the many balconies
in the French Quarters each night and they’re ready
to party till the wee hours of the morning.
Harrah’s has opened a huge casino right off of the
French Quarters District off of one of the main
thoroughfares, Canal Street. Besides a bar and restaurant
every ten feet, there are antique and art stores
galore, as well as the fair share of t-shirt and
novelty item stores. There are Katrina tours, swamp
boat tours – a riot if you’ve never done it before.
The bayou is so different from any other swamp that
you might have seen in the past. There are festivals
all year long, including Mardi Gras, Jazzfest, and
The French Quarters Festival – you name it! If they
can figure out a reason to have a party, with music
and great food, the New Orleans people will have
one. They really know how to move the crowds as
well. At Jazzfest, there were about 100,000 people
in attendance and there were no lines for food or
drinks. They had one person taking money, another
handing out the food coupons and the others serving
the food. The buses ran smoothly to and from the
New Orleans Fairgrounds where Jazzfest was held
l. They had staff set up at all of the major hotels,
selling transportation and festival tickets and
each hotel had their own buses going to and fro.
The lineup would impress any music lover in the
jazz, rhythm and blues realm, as well as a few general
crowd pleasers like Rod Stewart and Harry Connick
Jr.
You will find some very fine restaurants in New
Orleans, to please the most discriminating palates:
Lunch at Mélange at the Ritz, was very nice. Service
with a smile, professional beyond belief and the
food will tickle your taste buds. The seafood gumbo
was yummy, as was the salad. Dinner promises to
please as well.
Dinner at Bayona or GW Fins are definite crowd pleasers!
We couldn’t even get into Bayona this trip, so make
reservations well in advance of your trip.
On a more casual note:
Acme Oyster House is a sure Don’t Miss in New Orleans
– some of the best oysters you’ve ever tasted! They
must shuck truckloads of them every day! They don’t
take reservations, so you’ll find a line outside
most all day long, but they move the folks through
quite quickly.
Red Fish House was great as well! The fried calamari
was crunchy, served over slices of heirloom tomatoes,
with a creamy sauce sprinkled over it. The Jambalaya
pasta was real tasty as well.
And one mustn’t miss chicory coffee and beignets
at Café du Monde on Decatur Street. If you’re lucky,
one of the many street performers will serenade
or entertain you while you sip your coffee and eat
the powder sugar-laden beignets. Atmosphere at it’s
best...
New Orleans is different than any city you’ll ever
visit. The people are genuinely friendly, down to
earth and ready to enjoy life. Its one of the few
places in the USA that you can walk down the street
with a to go cup in your hand, music filling the
air, and beads, bobbles, boas and blue wigs abound,
to keep the most avid people-watchers amused.
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