Feast Your Eyes

"At the corner of Good-Children and Tchoupitoulas streets, I beheld an apparition! - and my first impulse was to dodge behind a lamp-post. It was a woman - a hay-stack of curtain calico, ten feet high—sweeping majestically down the middle of the street . . . . Next I saw a girl of eighteen, mounted on a fine horse, and dressed as a Spanish Cavalier, with long rapier, flowing curls, blue satin doublet and half-breeches, trimmed with broad white lace -(the balance of her dainty legs cased in flesh-colored silk stockings) - white kid gloves - and a nodding crimson feather in the coquettishest little cap in the world. She removed said cap and bowed low to me, and nothing loath, I bowed in return - but I couldn't help murmuring, "By the beard of the Prophet, Miss, but you've mistaken your man this time - for I never saw your silk mask before - nor the balance of your costume, either, for that matter." And then I saw a hundred men, women and children in fine, fancy, splendid, ugly, coarse, ridiculous, grotesque, laughable costumes ..." - Mark Twain, 1859

The city of New Orleans is home to thousands of beautiful houses, restaurants, museums and other buildings that have been accumulating here since the 18th century. Many whole neighborhoods have stood with their architectural character largely unchanged for over a century. We who live here travel under endless arcades of overhanging live oak boughs through a landscape of Victorian gingerbread, windows in carnival colors, cast-iron lace, riotously blooming azaleas and fences covered in jasmine. In short, to catalogue here everything worth seeing within the city would be impossible. Nevertheless the menu below should give you an idea of some things you shouldn't miss, and others you will only regret having missed.

There are any number of commercial tours themed from actual history to ghosts and vampires, more than a few places to buy spooky clothes, shoes and boots, more antique shops than we can count, and quite literally miles on end of boutiques on Magazine Street. Our two largest public parks are both accessible by streetcar and are home to breathtaking trees and water birds. City Park is the oldest and one of the largest urban parks in the United States. Audubon Park, named for Jean-Jacques Audubon, who made New Orleans his home for some years, contains a lagoon, the award-winning zoo and a mile-long view of the Mississippi River.

Some other Neighborhoods of Note

The Faubourg Marigny - immediately downtown of the French Quarter, the Marigny is a mostly residential neigborhood, although Frenchmen St. is full of jazz clubs, restaurants, bars, shops and so on for a few blocks. The Marigny also contains the emerging arts and entertainment district of St. Claude Ave., but anyone not from here, on seeing the place, would probably wonder at where we get off describing St. Claude as an arts and entertainment district. At various places throughout the Marigny are also some bars, coffee shops and restaurants ranging from fascinatingly awful (in a few cases) to strangely wonderful (in most others).

The Bywater - downtown of the Marigny, the Bywater is an even more residential neighborhood that likewise contains some terrific restaurants (Elizabeth's, Pizza Delicious, and the Joint come to mind immediately), but recently has also seen an attempted colonization by Williamsburg hipsters looking for a more authentic place to show off their artisanal beards and organic bicycle customizations. It sometimes gets national press, but always in a hilariously inaccurate fashion. There have been a couple of New York Times pieces that we thought might have been satire on how a clueless reporter would view the place.

Uptown - a location as well as a direction, Uptown New Orleans is encompasses pretty much everything upriver of the Warehouse District and many different neighborhoods. If you're done walking around the Garden District, head slightly downtown on Magazine St. to the Lower Garden District to eat. If you've taken the St. Charles streetcar to get a look at the miles on end of mansions or travel to Audubon Park, go to Oak Street, Riverbend (the area where St. Charles Ave. ends and makes a soft right to become Carrollton Ave.) or Maple Street to get coffee, food of a dozen varieties, books, comics, vintage clothes, booze, and so on.

Mid-city - On your way to either the cemeteries or City Park, the area around Canal St. and Carrolton Ave. is full of unique places to eat and drink. We could write a small essay on the better places to go within two blocks of that intersection, but we'll save it for later. Suffice it to say that everything from Vietnamese fusion to fine-dining Mexican to a hundred-ten-year-old Sicilian ice cream parlour to Phillipine food to tacos and burritos to barbequeue, pizza and absurdly good brunch coexists in a small area. Mid-City is actually a very large region of the city with a good deal more to say, but that intersection is where you'll most likely end up there if at all.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of places worth seeing - we could name more than a few in the Warehouse District or Bayou St. John or the Irish Channel - but we hope it's illustrative of places you'll want to spend a few hours if you can find the time while visiting.