New Orleans Has a Story

Resistance is futile

For the third time this week, someone stepped out of a taxi cab and asked, "Why are you flying the Corsican flag from your front balcony?"  

When I'm sitting on the front stoop, reading the newspaper, enjoying a cigar and the March temperatures, watching the cab traffic, most people who walk by look at the flag, and then they ask if this is a pirate house.  It is not a pirate house.  It is a colorful and eccentric, historic New Orleans bed and breakfast inn.  The flag was a gift from our generous neighbor who is an amateur vexillologist.  Unwittingly, he gave us a conversation piece.

Everyday can be St. Valentine's Day in New Orleans

You know what they say about people from Minnesota?  Well, it's true.  It is also true about people who visit New Orleans from Austria, Australia, Flower Mound, TX, and Upperco, MD.  From The City of Brotherly Love, to the seat of Clark County, Arkansas, from The City of Lights, to the Hog Butcher of the World, people are nice.  Happily, this seems to be a fact of life.  We've found it to be the case on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue.  Wandering our neighborhood, it soon becomes obvious that people are nice for blocks and blocks around our address.  

2216 Esplanade Avenue

You never know what you'll find in New Orleans if you poke around a bit, if you crane your neck, if you pause to smell the satsuma blossoms and magnolias, or if you pause for a moment to more closely examine that flash of color that caught the corner of your eye for a hint of a second.  New Orleans is a city of double takes.  You can't trust your eyes.  You have to trust your instincts.

We are not going to suggest that there is anything more special in the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue than there is anywhere else in the rest of the City of New Orleans.  We cannot.  There isn't.  All of New Orleans is magical.  There are surprises and epiphanies in every nook and niche for people who wear a certain kind of glasses, ready to take a bite of the Crescent City's cookery. 

If you are paying close attention, you might see a flash of colors not found in nature peeking out between some wild ginger leaves overgrowing a green-painted cast iron fence on the downtown property line of an address on the uptown side of Esplanade Avenue.  Some people think they have just glimpsed a butterfly fluttering by and think nothing else of it.  The dogs people walk along Esplanade keep their noses to the ground, then they pull at the leash to get at a chicken bone lying a few yards toward the river.  Joggers jog by with only their destination in sight.  Some people stop for a minute or more.

There are enchanted places on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans:

The DayGlo Madonnas of Esplanade Avenue

Our Lady of Rocheblave:

Orange Madonna

And Our Lady of Dorgenois:

Green Madonna

Good people are out and about everywhere in New Orleans, every day.  There are both sinners and saints.  In this most catholic of cities, everyone is welcome and everyone treats everybody else the way they would like to be treated.  There are no strangers in New Orleans, only friends and family, whether you know it yet or not.  The facts of life are not always nice, but they are always good.  When you are in New Orleans, life is good.

You never forget your first day in New Orleans.  Every day after that only gets better.  If you don't live here, stay for more than a weekend.  Stay for a week.  Though you may not be able to move here, you'll want to come back every year, at least for a short spell to revive your batteries. 

A votre sante.

La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast