absolute escapes
New Orleans: Where the Living is Easy
intro: It's the home of jazz and Mardi Gras, Mississippi steamboats and antebellum plantations, an intoxicating blend of French and Spanish, Cajun and Creole cultures where the music and dancing never stops. This is New Orleans, queen of the Deep South. Report by Belinda Beckett.
It's Gone with the Wind and Dixie, cotton fields and all that jazz. New Orleans, Louisiana, the city they call The Big Easy, is more laid back than horizontal. Although a thriving American city has grown up around its historical heart, it clings to the old colonial traditions as tenaciously as the Spanish moss to its tea olive trees.
Nouvelle Orleans was founded in 1718 by the French, conquered by the Spanish in 1763 and taken back, briefly, by Napoleon who sold it in 1803 to President Thomas Jefferson to pay off some of France's national debt. The Louisiana Purchase became known as one of the greatest real estate buys in history.
Cupped in the crescent of the Mississippi River whose vast network of tributaries criss-cross the mid-continent of north America down to the Gulf of Mexico, the climate is so steamy and tropical that a thick mist often hovers over the alligator swamps and bayous which lace through it like the pattern in a doily. The water table is so high that the dead have to be buried above ground - or they would float - a curiosity that has made New Orleans' 42 cemeteries official tourist attractions.
Soul City
New Orleans has romance in its soul. Its dignified old cotton and sugar plantations and magnificent antebellum mansions conjure up images from a golden era, of southern belles in crinoline gowns flirting with their beaux on the front porch beneath a canopy of wisteria and blood red clematis. It is a city of street cars and cobbled avenues where the smoky aroma of shrimp blackening on pecan wood curls from the doorways of creole cookhouses and chic pavement bistros serve shiny red boiled she-crabs on snow white platters. Lone street saxophonists play their melancholic music long into the night and steam boats - carrying tourists rather than cotton these days - chug soulfully up the Mississippi.
The old French Quarter, built in the early 18th century, is a ten block mosaic of colour, a collage of old and new traditions, cultures and customs while famous Bourbon Street, once a stately residential district, now caters for every sensory pleasure that ever existed this side of the Mississippi Delta. A visit should begin with the ritual of breakfast at Café du Monde where, since 1860, the locals have always commenced their day with café au lait and warm beignets. Farmers from all across the state have been here since the early hours setting out their stalls at the French Market, piled high with fresh okra, sweet potatoes and juicy yams. Here too is the Cajun Store, renowned for boudin, a sausage made of crawfish or alligator tails. Jackson Square in Vieux Carre is a stage for tap dancers, mime artists, jugglers and magicians and an open air gallery for talented local artists. Horses and buggies trot tourists around the square watched by curious pigeons clustered on the steps of St. Louis Cathedral.
With some 40,000 listed historic buildings, it is difficult to know where to begin. The most senior in the Mississippi Valley is the Old Ursuline Convent, built in 1745, while the Confederate Museum, the second largest in America, contains an insight, through their personal effects, into the lives and characters of President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee. The Presbytere, a former Spanish colonial priests' house, now exhibits the state's collection of paintings, decorative art, antique clothing and historic photographs. Dulfilho's Pharmacie Museum, site of the first licensed chemist in America, has a botanical garden out back where you can listen to sad ballads from the American Civil War. Numerous town houses and noble plantation mansions filled with exquisite antiques are open to the public, such as Beauregard-Keyes House, erstwhile home of General Beauregard and later, the novelist, Frances Parkinson Keyes. Conversely, for a fascinating insight into how the other half lived, take The Swamp Tour to a typical Cajun family's back yard, complete with alligators! Voodoo is very much part of old New Orleans and has its own museum where you can trace its roots, study books on the occult and buy your very own doll and pin set.
A Culinary New World
Eating opens up a new gastronomical world. Traditional fare falls into the category of Creole, the grande cuisine of the rich planters who brought their own chefs over from France and Spain, or Cajun, the strong country food introduced by the Acadians, French-Canadian émigrés from Nova Scotia, which is pungent, peppery and usually cooked in one pot. Gumbo ( a chunky soup) jambalaya (a rich stew) grits (like porridge) blackened steak flamed in Bourbon, black-eyed peas, sweet potatoes and even roasted squirrel can be found on the menu while soft shell crabs, crawfish and choupique caviar are just a taste of the incredible range of seafood. The Bayona is the place to sample Nouvelle Creole in an elegant, 19th century setting, the Commander's Palace is the grand dame of New Orleans fine dining or you can nourish both body and soul at the Palm Court Jazz Café.
Bar culture defines New Orleans. Every neighbourhood (some say every street) every ethnic group, socio-economic strata and sexual preference under the Louisiana sun has a favourite watering hole. Sip the best Bloody Mary in the city on the atmospheric front porch of Columns, an antebellum home-turned-hotel which was the bordello in the film, Pretty Baby, starring Brooke Shields. Or take cocktails at Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge, the eponymous home base for the late 1950s R&B star.
Mardi Gras is an irreverent, hedonistic street carnival of unclear origin that has extended Shrove Tuesday into a week of celebrations. In 1857 a secret society of men called the Mystick Krewe of Comus started the first torchlight parades. When Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia paid a visit in 1872 and there was no royalty to give him a proper welcome, it became tradition to elect a King for the day and the custom stuck.
However it is for jazz that New Orleans is best known. The Jazz Heritage Festival, to be celebrated from 27 April to 6 May next year, is an annual homage to the music that originated here circa 1900. The festival involves some 4,000 musicians playing everything from Latin and Dixieland to zydeco, a foot-stomping creole party music. The city has also been holding an ongoing jazz centennial celebration with numerous live concerts and has opened a Jazz Walk of Fame, commemorating America's most significant original art form.
Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Domino and Louis Armstrong, Dixieland, trad jazz and modern, it can all be heard here, any time of day - even in the street where the town hall has thoughtfully placed seating and poles for listeners to lean on. Most people don't use them though ... they're too busy dancing.