NEW ORLEANS – FOUR YEARS LATER

Driving back from Texas last week, we decided to take the southern route, because the northern route through Arkansas is incredibly boring. After two days in New Orleans, we came to the conclusion that we may have been better off suffering through Arkansas.

New Orleans is still a mess. Only about 70 per cent of their population has returned, there were very few tourists and it smelled.

We stayed in a “boutique” hotel on the edge of the French Quarter, Le Richelieu. It was actually very nice, and I would recommend it. That was one of two good experiences....and it's the only hotel in the French Quarter with free parking. We saved $60.

For dinner, we walked about three blocks from the hotel, and we didn’t like the looks of the neighborhood. It was vacant, there were gang signs everywhere and there was a pervading odor. I was uncomfortable. Not only am I walking in a foot cast (due to my little accident in July) but also we looked like tourists. We were eyed suspiciously. This was in the early evening.

The next morning, we walked more toward the center of things in the French Quarter and Jackson Square.I had the same feeling. It was like being in an unfriendly foreign country.

Then we discovered the famous Café Du Monde. Right in the middle of the French Quarter with a view of the Mississippi River a few hundred yards away, is the famous Café. We had their famous "beignets” . It was heaven. They are big mounds of fried dough with powdered sugar. It was like a funnel cake on steroids. Wonderful. That was good experience number two. Only in Louisiana is there a state doughnut, "the beignet."

The rest of the day we walked (I limped) around the French Quarter. While never known to be the classiest or cleanest place on earth, only two words in my vocabulary can describe it: seedy and dirty. It was kind of like Times Square used to be before Rudy and Disney cleaned it up to what it is now.

The whole area was void of tourists. In the busy part of the Square with St. Louis Cathedral as a backdrop, there were few people. The “horse and buggy” trade was empty. To help them out, we took a half hour tour. The guide was excellent cand took us all around the French Quarter. The “horse” was actually a donkey as they have a lower body temperature, she explained.

Still, what struck us was how empty the city was. Our “donkey and buggy” took up the whole street on Bourbon, Chartres, Canal and other streets and not a car was behind us. No traffic and no tourists seemed to be the theme.

The panhandlers, however, were working hard. We were hit up for money by a working street person posing as a tourist. We were followed by another guy.

We walked up the levy to sit and look at the Mississippi. There was no one there at 1:00 in the afternoon. Having visited New Orleans previously, I remember there were swarms of tourists and locals in those areas.

The most interesting part of this visit was talking to the locals. Everyone we spoke to evacuated during Katrina. Several went to Jackson, Mississippi for months. A waitress and a recent graduate from Loyola had to evacuate because their campus is adjacent to the much larger campus of Tulane, and Tulane was flooded. She was gone for six months. Absolutely everyone we talked to had a story, and they had to leave their homes. It was hard to imagine.

Dining was an experience, and we decided it just isn’t a good city for non-seafood lovers. I have allergies and Vince just doesn’t like seafood. For our one-year anniversary, we looked long and hard for a restaurant that was not all seafood. After driving to the Garden District, we found one. It was Mediterranean fare, so we had some kind of steak-on-a-stick. It was good...until 3:00 a.m. when I woke up with food poisoning.

Where was the music? We asked about live music. We were there on a Sunday and Monday and those are the down nights. There was a place several people recommended to us, “all the locals go there” but it was in that seedy neighborhood near the hotel. I wanted to go where the tourists go. We drove through the French Quarter and heard nothing but canned music. A few street musicians lined Jackson Square, but that was it.

*****
LEAVING NEW ORLEANS (the best part)……Driving Interstate 10 toward Biloxi and Gulfport, we saw some of the damage and rebuilding from Katrina. Miles and miles and miles of new, small homes were constructed. Many new apartment buildings with signs begging for renters were visible as well. Some areas still had blue tarps on them and some were just condemned. This was endless.

The New Orleans Times Picayune, four years later, almost to the day, was filled with Katrina and FEMA stories. There are still thousands of boats and vehicles underwater in Lake Ponchartrain as well as in countless rivers, canals, waterways and bayous. These are making life difficult for the fishermen, whose nets are getting caught in the ever-shifting debris as well as the large vessels who require the shipping lanes.

Whose fault is it that New Orleans hasn't recovered? Who knows. FEMA, the federal govenment, local government? It's probably a combination of a lot of factors.

AND FOR THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF ALL, Gulfport and Biloxi are virtually gone as beach towns. I am not kidding. They’re gone. Except for a few high-rise casinos, the beach towns I loved as a kid are GONE. We drove fifteen miles each way between Biloxi and Gulfport, so that I could process this. There’s nothing on the ocean side of the highway. There’s very little on the other side of the highway, but there is some degree of rebuilding. That’s it. No hotels, motels, junky souvenir shops, honky-tonk places..nothing. It’s gone. Wow. So much for our plans to stay there. At the end of August, there was virtually no one on the beach for 15 miles. It was hard to believe the devastation that Katrina and several previous hurricanes caused. Thriving beach towns were wiped out.

I’ve read it, and seen it on TV, but until you actually see it, it’s hard to comprehend.

Despite the smell, panhandlers, creepy neighborhoods, seedy bars and food poisoning, we had a good first anniversary! The second anniversary will NOT be in New Orleans!