New Orleans’ Top 10
Loving Live Music
1Music flows deep in the soul of New Orleans. Every beat, be it Cajun fiddle or brass-band drumline, measures out the rhythm of the cultures that came together to create this startlingly unique city. Frenchmen Street is packed with joints playing rock, metal, hip-hop, folk and, of course, jazz. If you can walk its few small blocks without hearing something you like, you may as well keep walking out of New Orleans, because the sound and the soul of this city are inextricably married.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Creole Architecture
2Looks aren’t always skin deep. In New Orleans the architectural skin is integral to the city’s spirit – and gives an undeniably distinctive sense of place. What immediately sets New Orleans apart from the USA is the architecture of the Creole faubourgs (‘fo-burgs’), or neighborhoods. This includes the shaded porches of the French Quarter, of course, but also filigreed Marigny homes, candy-colored Bywater cottages and the grand manses of Esplanade Ave (pictured). Look down streets in these areas and you’ll know, intuitively and intensely, that you are in New Orleans.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Mardi Gras
3There’s spectacle, and then there’s Mardi Gras. On Fat Tuesday, the most fantastic costumes, the weirdest pageantry, West African rituals, Catholic liturgy, homegrown traditions, massive parade floats, and a veritable river of booze all culminate in the single most exhausting and exhilarating day of your life. At all times of year, New Orleans is a feast for the senses, but she becomes a veritable all-you-can-eat banquet during Carnival time, and achieves a sort of apotheosis of hedonism come Mardi Gras day.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Eating a Po’boy
4If by ‘sandwich’ we mean a portable meal that contains vegetable and meat enclosed by starch, the po’boy is perfection, the Platonic ideal of sandwiches. But let’s get to the detail: its fresh filling (roast beef or fried seafood are the most common, but the possibilities are endless), tomatoes, lettuce, onion, mayo, pickles and a perfect loaf of not-quite-French bread. The ideal po’boy is elusive: try Mahony’s on Magazine St, Domilise’s Po-boys Uptown or Parkway in Mid-City.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Drinking Classic Cocktails
5A significant case could be made that the cocktail, a blend of spirits mixed into something delicious and dangerous, was invented in New Orleans. Bitters, long considered a crucial component of any cocktail, is the homegrown creation of a French Quarter pharmacy. When someone calls a drink a ‘classic cocktail,’ it’s because local bartenders have been making it here for centuries. The ultimate New Orleans drink is the Sazerac (pictured); it can be enjoyed at any time of day, but always adds a touch of class.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Second Lines
6New Orleans is a city that loves to celebrate, but you don’t have to wait for a specific day on the calendar to throw down. Second Lines – neighborhood parades thrown by African American civic organizations known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs – are weekly parades that kick off every Sunday outside of summer. Folks gather somewhere in the city (often in Tremé); a band leads the way, dancers parade in their finest clothes, and the Second Line – a following crowd, which should include you – high steps behind.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Crescent Park
7The Mississippi River has long been the defining geographic feature of New Orleans, but for years, it lacked a park that truly allowed for quiet enjoyment of the waterfront (the path that edges the French Quarter has always been too busy for contemplation). No longer. Crescent Park not only links the Marigny to Bywater; it showcases, via a mix of green landscaping and austere metallic installations, both the watery might of the Mississippi and the gothic edges of old riverfront industrial facilities.
New Orleans’ Top 10
St Charles Avenue Streetcar
8Some of the grandest homes in the USA line St Charles Ave, shaded by enormous live oak trees that glitter with the tossed beads of hundreds of Mardi Gras floats. Underneath in the shade, joggers pace themselves along the grassy ‘neutral ground’ (median) while Tulane kids flirt with Loyola friends. Clanging through this bucolic corridor comes the St Charles Avenue Streetcar, a mobile bit of urban transportation history, bearing tourists and commuters along a street as important to American architecture as Frank Lloyd Wright.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Shopping on Magazine Street
9Forget Fifth Ave. Erase Oxford Street. So long, Rue Saint-Honoré. Magazine Street – specifically the 3-mile stretch of it that smiles along the bottom bend of New Orleans’ Uptown – may be the world’s best shopping street. Sure, there’s an absence of big names, but you’ll uncover a glut of indie boutiques; tons of vintage; po’boys for the hungry; antiques warehouses galore; art galleries in profusion; big shady trees; and architecture that will charm your toes off.
New Orleans’ Top 10
Bayou St John
10The Mississippi River is nice and all, but it’s big and busy and, to be frank, it doesn’t always smell great. Bayou St John, on the other hand, is a quiet, rustic, yet aquatic escape located smack in the middle of the city. This winding waterway once served as a riverine highway across the swamps, but today it’s a spot to walk your dog, take a romantic stroll, have a breeze-blown picnic and just generally escape from the urban jungle.
