Downtown New Orleans

Fraternal twins

Downtown is different from Uptown in New Orleans.  Like Chang and Eng, and yin and yang, they are connected by a common spine.  We call it Canal Street.

Uptown of Canal Street, where some, not all, cross streets are called South, is Uptown.  Downtown of Canal Street, where cross streets are called North, even when they tack southeast, is Downtown.

Algiers, on the West Bank, which is due south of the Canal Street ferry, is the third half of New Orleans.  I'm not even going to think about talking about how The East fits into this.

"We've been staying with my sister, a block away from Guy's Po' Boys," Lenore told me this morning at breakfast.  "We've been in New Orleans a week, and for our last two days, we thought we should stay in Downtown."  Smart move.  They had dinner al fresco at Santa Fe.  It was 80 degrees yesterday evening.

Downtown is different from Uptown in New Orleans, but not in the way it is in other cities.  Uptown, you'll find the silk stocking district, the red-white-and-bluebloods, the old money, the seersucker set.  Downtown, things are more relaxed.  The tricolor is the same, but it is pronounced blue, white and red.  Wherever you are in New Orleans, you are in New Orleans.  

There is a family resemblance on every street.  It is in the city's DNA.  Every stranger is friend you haven't yet met.  There is no denying it.  There is no horrible part of New Orleans.

We live downtown.  We like it here.  We will probably be buried here.  There are worse, worse places.

A votre sante,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.