Driving down the elevated I-10 into New Orleans is a surreal experience. The view of the Superdome awakens memories of CNNs pictures of a flooded city and thousands upon thousands of stranded people. The fact that 80% of this city was under water only 4 years ago is hard to fathom – the city is so vibrant and positive it’s hard to connect it to those horrifying images we all remember.

Anyways, those were the thoughs running through my head as we entered The Big Easy. Those and keeping my eyes peeled as I tried to navigate the insanely tight and mostly one way streets of the French Quarter. We were staying at the Prince Conti (pronounced “cont-eye” in the local dialect) Hotel right on Bourbon Street and arriving it quickly became obvious why most of the hotels down there have mandatory valet parking: There are about 2 parking spots for every 100 cars in the French Quarter (ok, that may be a slight exaggeration but seriously, there are practically no spots anywyere, and we were there in the off season!). Relunctantly we handed off the keys and brought all our stuff up to the stylish and quaint (i.e. tiny) room with cute (i.e. too short) beds. No, I can’t be mean: The hotel was absolutely great (in spite of the beds’ shortcomings) and the front desk staff was both courteous (as in “Mr.” and “Miss”) and very helpful. I would recommend it to anyone visiting New Orleans.

Take a cooking class and learn where to go

Miss Anne spooning out jambalaya

Throughout this trip we really haven’t done much in terms of planning before arriving in a city. For the most part that works just fine and we end up discovering stuff we wouldn’t have otherwise. But had we done some planning ahead of time we would have gotten more out of New Orleans. And here’s why: The last day of our 3 day stay we went to the New Orleans School of Cooking. Leaving we realized we should have gone there first, but that would have required booking well in advance – the place is damn popular, for a reason. New Orleans is famous for the food. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that the food is necessarily good in all the restaurants – quite the contrary actually. But if you go to the cooking school, run by people who love food almost too much they’ll tell you exactly what restaurants to go to and what to order. After they cook up a great meal that is.

We went to a 10am 2 hour class with chef Anne Leonhard who whipped up a delicious meal consisting of gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding and pecan pralines, all of which we got to eat at the end of the lesson. Not only was it a great lunch but we left with recipes, satisfied taste buds and lots of history and information on the city and its culutre. You see it turns out Anne used to be a tour guide before she started cooking at the school and being a N’awlins native she is the proverbial bottomless well where information is concerned. And she has a great attitude to boot. At the end of the class she fielded questions on everything from Katrina devestation to ghost stories. Very cool.

Here’s my tip: If you’re going to New Orleans for the first time, book a 10am class at the New Orleans School of Cooking for the first day of your visit. That way you’ll get great local food and historical background right off the bat and you can ask questions about where to go, what to eat and what to see from the knowledgeable staff. It’ll cost you $27 a head but it’s well worth it.

An off-season haven

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear New Orleans? I think it’s fair to assume Mardi Gras, beads and drunken street revelers figures pretty high on the list. Which is too bad, because Bourbon Street is such a miniscule part of what the city has to offer. Speaking for myself I can honestly say out of everything I saw in New Orleans Bourbon Street was not only the least interesting but a place I would stay far far away from if there was a party happening. Even in off-season the night scene is a travesty of human debauchery and over-indulgence with ear splitting music from every bar, barely dressed hookers in most doorways and vendors peddling hard liquor like it was fresh water in a desert town. I can imagine what it must be like during the party season – with the temperature rising to stifling levels and the alcohol consumption nearing lethal dosage. The horror, the horror. But I digress.

My point is this: If you skip Bourbon Street and walk down one of the other streets in the city you’ll find a truly unique and strangely beautiful town stuck in a sort of timeless wonderland between the past and the future. Coming from Europe I’ve seen my share of modernised old cities, but New Orleans is something truly unique. Whereas the old European cities usually upgrade by keeping old facades and changing the interiors, the French Quarter seems to have opted for more of a patchwork approach: Rather than fixing what’s broken or restoring it back to its original state they do the bare minimum of repair leaving the city to slowly take on a fairytale like atmosphere. The paint and mortar is peeling off, the brick is exposed, the walls are sagging and the whole place becomes so full of soul and history it is hard to put into words. You just have to experience it for yourself.

We’d heard horror stories before we came; of people being mugged in broad daylight; of scammers on every street corner; of robbed hotel rooms. We saw none of it. For the most part the city was sparsely populated, bordering on empty, and we walked through the streets late at night with few interactions at all. Some of the lack of people was due to the time of year for sure, and some of it must be blamed on Katrina – after all much of the pre-2005 population is still displaced – but honestly, if you’re not on your knees drunk with your shirt off and 50 beads around your neck I don’t think you’re much of a target, even in a city known for its crime.

History in the making

We went to New Orleans in part to eat real Cajun food. Little did we know that Cajun food is actually a fairly recent invention only introduced in the 1970s. And as such it is a cooking style still very much in development. For example, crab cakes – a famous New Orleans dish – were actually introduced by Emril Lagasse! Weird eh? New Orleans is a city steeped in history, much of which is still being written today. We went on a Haunted History Tour the first night with a great guide who told us plenty of spooky tales about young men being ripped apart on “Romeo Catchers”, mad doctors performing experimental surgeries on their slaves and suicides in hotel rooms. But what really fascinated me were the true history bits interspersed among the blood and gore. Our guide actually told us he’d rather be a historical tour guide, but all the money is in haunted tours so that’s where he ended up. In hindsight I think I would have gotten more out of a daytime historical walk of the French Quarter. You are literally walking through history in these small streets and it often felt as if we were missing out on something.

We also went on a swamp tour – one I think we should have replaced with a devestation tour. As I said before close to 80% of New Orleans was under water after Katrina and though the French Quarter was largely untouched, the rest of the city did not fare well. My dad sent me a quick email while we were there saying “The oldest part of town – French Quarter – is above sea level, of course!” and it’s true: The oldest inhabitants of the city knew better than to build a city literally under water. But as people swarmed in more land was needed and the levies were built. We all know how that went. Be that as it may just like the worn down walls and cobblestones of the French Quarter tell the story of life in the old New Orleans, so does the devestated areas left by Katrina tell the story of the current one. And it is an important story of technological achievements and failures, human loss and endurance and lessons ignored and learned. In short I have to go back and do one of the tours before they upturn the Ninth Ward and build something new there.

The photo walk of my dreams

More than anything New Orleans is a photographer’s dream. There is so much beauty and weirdness in the city that pretty much wherever you point your lens there is something worth taking a picture of. As always I took way too many pictures and spent hours sorting through them to figure out what to post here and what to save for my own stash. In the end I realized I have to go back because even though my folder says I have 300 images they are nowhere close to documenting this strange city in all its worn down beauty. If you can, you should go.

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