NEW ORLEANS: A CITY TO SAVE AND TO SAVOUR

Article by guest author Peter Brooker

I jumped on a plane straight from Calgary to New Orleans. We hired a car from the airport and drove to the Intercontinental Hotel where parking cost $50 a day without Valet. (Valet an extra $15). 

The hotel is great, the breakfast is superb and I recommend getting the omelets straight from the grill man. 

The grill man also works in Antoine’s, which is one of the oldest restaurants in the French Quarter. We visited there in the evening, and if you've seen the movie JFK, where Kevin Costner tells his team, 'we're through the looking glass people, white is black and black is white,' you'll have a rough idea on what it looks like. 

Antoine’s is great value, as is Napoleon's House also in the French Quarter, and also featured in the movie JFK where Kevin Costner learns that the president has died. Although Napoleon's House is really just a lunch venue. 

The last JFK location was the beautiful Sazerac Lounge in the art deco Roosevelt Hotel. This is where John Candy told Kevin Costner that he is 'as crazy as your Mumma.' 

You can do official JFK tours, as well as Swamp Tours, and a bus tour which the hotel recommended to us because the bus is smaller and you get to see more of the city than you would with a hop-on hop-off. This was the Cajun Encounters tour, and the guide whose name was Steve was funny and informative. 

The cemeteries are fascinating because New Orleans is only 3 feet or so above the water table. They used to bury their dead but the caskets kept coming up to land during times of floods and body parts would be scattered all over the city. 

In 1969 Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper broke into St Louis cemetery on Basin street and filmed the infamous climatic drug-fueled scenes to Easy Rider. Because of that film it’s illegal to film in a catholic cemetery here in New Orleans. 

The best music venues can be found down Frenchman street. So called because that's where the Spanish governor at the time rounded up the ringleaders of the French resistance, shot them and hung them. 

The streets are strewn with Spanish moss, the fuzzy stuff that make it look like something out of a fairy tale. However, it’s not Spanish and it's not moss. 

In the French Quarter sits the Louis Cathedral, the oldest Catholic Church in the US. They hold Mass there every day and tours through cathedral are not only free, they’re air conditioned. 

North of Frenchmen Street is where all the rich folk live. Folk like, Sandra bullock, John Goodman and Beyoncé. The poor houses, or the shotgun houses are differentiated by the colour schemes that make them look like a Skittles Theme Park. But the rich houses are distinguished by their architecture. Some Germanic, some with sweetheart staircases, and each has a personality unto itself

Regrettably I missed the World war 2 Museum, which apparently takes more than one day to completely absorb. If the weather is stormy or oppressively hot, this museum would provide not only great sanctuary, but a place to learn about the city's unique history in the war. 

You may see the name Andrew Higgins banded around various corners of New Orleans. He built the Higgins boat. That's the rectangular boat you see at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan when they storm the beaches of Normandy. 

Overall a place to visit, to return, to enjoy and savour as who knows how much longer New Orleans can keep its head above water.