24 Hours in The Big Easy (USA Day 150)

Having arrived after 3am the previous night and let ourselves in using a secret entrance, we didn’t actually meet our hosts last night. And waking after 9am, after they’d presumably left for work, we expected that to continue. However, there was some movement by our bedroom door: somebody was trying to get in.

“Hello?” I called.

The person whimpered. Scratched. Whimpered again.

I threw on some clothes and twisted the handle, only for the door to fly open and a kangaroo of a dog bounce in, simultaneously wagging effusively and crying openly. This was Reggie, the wide-eyed and emotional third member of this family, who clearly found us a little too much. He cried and wagged, sniffed and cried for a good twenty minutes as we unpacked and prepared for a day in New Orleans.

Once we’d dried Reggie’s tears, he showed us around Dan and Anna (do doo do do do)’s beautiful house, then let us get on with our day. We chose to walk, and found ourselves tramping the streets of the Treme district, with its veranda-fronted southern houses painted in beautifully vibrant tones, often lifted off the flood-liable ground by a few feet. But for every four cute homes, we’d see one utterly destroyed, or even an empty lot. This city still bears plenty of evidence of its tragic history with natural disasters. Even this year’s storms have had their impact on roofs and windows. The locals, sitting on their porches in garden chairs, waved us past with an earnest “How ya doin’?” We felt so welcome here already.

We headed for Li’l Dizzy’s café, a local haunt with famous gumbo. After taking the only free table in the packed little room full of police officers in their lunch break, local suited-businessmen ‘doing lunch’ and hungry families loading up on chicken, we were approached by Lucy, who gave us a menu but told us, “Y’all’ll be havin’ the buffet.”

She was right. We filled our plates with pork and beans, fried chicken and green beans, then came back for a side-bowl of rice and gumbo. Each element was more than we’d imagined, and so far beyond any attempt at ‘Cajun’ food in Britain. It’s intensely aromatic from the spices, densely flavoured from the slow-cooking methods and ridiculously messy, thanks to the small plates. Even the fried chicken was better than fried chicken: crisp, moist, never a bland mouthful.

The next hour or so was a blur. I remember Lucy smacking me with her menu and saying, “I like you.” I remember some mention of bread pudding. I remember accepting a second cup of sweet tea. Then we were tottering down the street, inflated and burping like spicy balloons, wondering if we’d ever be hungry again.

The French quarter knew full well what it was. All the tight streets and narrow-railed balconies piped us towards the Mississippi amongst an ever-growing crowd of tourists, off-duty cooks and unsavoury types eyeing our pockets. Bourbon Street didn’t need a signpost. The bars suddenly blared with music, their corner doors manned by grinning bouncers. Pedicabs rattled by filled with gawping families. Things started calling themselves ‘authentic’ or ‘world-famous’. I was offered cocaine by a guy in very low-slung jeans. Then we were out again, zig-zagging through the streets in search of Jackson Square, which we’d lined up as Something To See but were horribly wrong.

You’ve been here, even if you haven’t. There’s your caricature artist, your henna tattooist and your apathetic busking trumpeter. Dominating the scene was a troupe whose performance seemed to focus on taking the public’s money through a combination of delaying tactics, home-town shout-outs and guilt-trips. Despite standing there for twenty minutes, we had no idea what their skill was, but they’d given a kid $40 and were repeatedly telling their audience how charitable it would be for them to stuff cash into their big red sacks. This masterclass of non-performance had us gobsmacked. Later, two blocks down and out of sight of the rest of the tourists, we saw them making their way straight to the bank with plastic bags positively bursting with money.

For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered through some of New Orleans’ other districts, searching for cool murals and cute streets and finding both. The sun set and we hurried home, where Reggie cried when he saw us. We also met Anna, who didn’t cry but we didn’t hold it against her.

We’re exhausted. Sleep is the only important thing right now, but tomorrow we’ll explore the city even closer.