Skip to content 
New Orleans
Feed Your Soul
Seduced by the Allure of New Orleans
By Mark Stevens
The sun spotlights the historic buildings fronting Bourbon Street, their wrought-iron balconies festooned with hanging flower baskets, but twilight fast approaches in New Orleans’ storied French Quarter. On one corner a solo saxophonist seduces onlookers as a fortune teller is in a deep session, storytelling a dark future to her client.
Our immediate future au contraire is bright. Following a 40-year bond with this city that started in a small Canadian bar ironically dubbed Bourbon Street, my wife Sharon and I have finally decided on a couples’ getaway to NOLA (short for New Orleans, Louisiana).
Situated on the shores of the Mississippi River, New Orleans embodies the charm of the Deep South—a charm rife with culture and traditions that we discovered exploring the heat-soaked streets of the French Quarter and the magnolia-shaded streets of the Garden District. But that’s only the start.
A Cultural Cornucopia
Three unique cultures add to the allure of New Orleans.
In the 18th century, the French first settled this wild terrain that later saw them teeter-totter with the Spanish until finally in 1803 the Louisiana Purchase galvanized this hot spot as the United States.
With those adopted French influences from Cajun folks who left Acadie on Canada’s East Coast to the Creole who brought customs from Haiti, you’ll see deep-seated French and Caribbean styles in festivals like Mardi Gras and in the city’s varied cuisine.
Add a strong African and African-American influence to the recipe and you get a city with a culture unique in North America.
Hurricanes To Go
Early in our exploration of the French Quarter, Sharon and I order Hurricanes “to go” at a Bourbon Street watering hole called Lafitte’s, an establishment claiming to be the oldest building to host a bar in the entire United States.
Judging from the number of people lined up outside Lafitte’s, sampling a Hurricane is a French Quarter rite of passage.
Drinks in hand, we stroll the narrow streets, stopping at the towering St. Louis Cathedral with its trio of steeples piercing the sky. The heritage landmark blends Spanish colonial and French neo-Gothic designs. Next is the Cabildo, its whitewashed walls, a marvel of Spanish colonial architecture. We skirt Jackson Square, named after Andrew Jackson, who was America’s seventh president. His equestrian statue forever a victory emblem of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans makes a popular photo-op.
Church bells, signalling the hour, provide melodic motifs. I stop, gaze around, and breathe deeply. New Orleans has begun to feed my soul.
Room with a Vue
The following morning we ascend 34 storeys in the Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans to check out the Vue. One of NOLA’s new downtown attractions, our noses glued to the window, we stare at the river dribbling below with birds-eye views of the cathedral, its white steeples gleaming and the Garden District close by.
At the Vue, we try out the interactive displays and watch state-of-the-art animation of NOLA’s history and culture from an audio lesson in local music to a beginner’s guide to Mardi Gras, the city’s most famous annual festival.
Art in the Park
Next stop is City Park, a few kilometres from downtown. It is an emerald oasis of trails, wetlands and forests.
Here we encounter a five-hectare Sculpture Garden amid a setting of magnolia trees and live oak draped in Spanish moss. We meander past gardens, crossing tiny bridges guarding lazy lagoons, admiring masterpieces from Rodin to Henry Moore—more than 90 sculptures in total.
Beside the gardens, we pass between the towering Corinthian columns guarding the New Orleans Museum of Art to explore the collection gleaned from 50,000 masterpieces.
Back in the French Quarter, we browse the eclectic collection of Royal Street galleries from family-owned Sutton Galleries to local artist Ally Burguieres’ whimsical work at Gallery Burguieres.
But visual art is hardly the only hallmark of New Orleans culture.
The city hosts three opera companies, frequent Broadway shows and the Louisiana Symphony Orchestra, performing a hundred live concerts a year.
And New Orleans’ cultural pedigree hardly ends there.
A Streetcar Named Desire
One morning we board a streetcar named St. Charles. Streetcars no longer wend their way to a district called Desire, but I still feel like we’ve tapped into an incomparable literary culture.
Tennessee Williams lived in the French Quarter when he penned that iconic play. William Faulkner wrote his first novel here. Mark Twain visited frequently.
Today’s exploration features the historic Garden District, a lush green swath of residences and unique venues that inspired the late Gothic writer Anne Rice, doyenne of Vampire Chronicles. It’s the most famous stop on the St. Charles route.
After leaving the streetcar we head to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. where Spanish moss dangles from skeletal branches. Spooky above-ground tombs remind me of a horror movie. That’s no mere coincidence.
We later stroll past antebellum mansions with gaslights guarding gated entrances and inviting wraparound porches decked in patio chairs. On First Street, we stop by a sprawling two-storey mansion sporting a white porch and peach-painted wings. Yes, Anne Rice wrote Mayfair Witches here. Forget A Streetcar Named Desire.
The Birthplace of Jazz
It’s New Orleans’ reputation as the birthplace of jazz that drew us to Louis Armstrong Park. At the centre of this hallowed ground is Congo Square where enslaved Africans and free people of colour once gathered for earthy jam sessions.
Now, clad in traditional white clothing, dancers twirl to the beat of drums and wailing saxophones.
It is no ordinary jam session. For 200 years, every Sunday afternoon this hub was once bound only by slaves who could meet and play their music.
My musical encounters crescendoed at Preservation Hall, a New Orleans jazz institution since 1961. In a converted French Quarter art gallery, some of the city’s foremost traditional jazz artists perform in an intimate living-room-like setting.
A clarinetist launches into a chorus of “Bourbon Street.” Eyes locked onto my wife, it dawns on me that New Orleans does feed the soul.
An Order of Gumbo
The perfect metaphor for the cultural mix of New Orleans is this must-try delicacy of culinary fusions.
The term gumbo is a mélange of a West African word for okra which was a popular cooking ingredient used in this popular stew. Still, many versions of gumbo adopt roux as a thickening agent, thanks to French cuisine while other versions use filé for the same purpose, thanks to Indigenous influences.
Depending on your taste buds, gumbo can be spiced in either a Creole or Cajun style with equally diverse protein accompaniments like seafood, chicken, or even Andouille (a Cajun sausage).
Did You Know?
With at least five “haunted” restaurants and a wealth of iconic cemeteries, New Orleans might be the United States’ most haunted city. Be sure to book a haunted New Orleans tour, a cemetery tour or a visit to the Historic Voodoo Museum.
