What's It Like To Be An Innkeeper?

Gina Lollobrigida

When you are an innkeeper, you meet a lot of friends.  I can't speak for the people who staff the five-star hotels in the French Quarter, or the shiny towers around Canal Street.  As a part of an army of three, Frau Schmitt, Tammie, the housekeeper, and myself, I can only speak for the staff of La Belle Esplanade.  We meet a lot of friends for too short a while.  

Our Gina Lollobrigida

We run a New Orleans bed and breakfast on Esplanade Avenue.  It is more of a boutique operation than you'll find in the Central Business District.  We meet a lot of interesting people over the course of a month.  Good memories are made on Esplanade Avenue. 

A New Orleans bed and breakfast

We have five suites.  Each suite has a private bath equipped with an antique claw foot tub and a shower head with exceptional water pressure.  The hot water tanks are in the attic.  

Each suite also has two other rooms.  One is a sitting room.  The other is a bedroom.  There is a refrigerator stocked with local sodas, local beer, wine, juice and water.  There is a corner grocery two blocks away that has anything else you'll need.  There is a flat screen TV and free wifi.  We put pralines on the pillows.  Each suite has its own balcony, except Les Fleurs Suite.  It has a front porch that faces Esplanade Avenue.  

I haven't mentioned the furniture because every room is a different color and every suite has its own name: La Pelican, La France, Les Fleurs, Les Saintes, and Clio.  Each is comfortable and unique in its own way.

The bed in La Pelican Suite

We live in a very nice part of New Orleans. 

Whether you visit New Orleans for one day and two nights, or two days and three nights, you'll only get a taste of the city, and I'm not talking about the varied breakfast that Frau Schmitt whips up every morning.

Ready for breakfast

You'll want to come back to New Orleans even if you stay seven days and eight nights.  There is too much to discover.  There are more good memories to be made.   

What's it like to be an innkeeper?  We don't travel much.  We have both been all over the world, but we are happy where we are now.  There is too much to discover.  It's not as easy as we make it look, but it's probably not as hard as you think.  Everything I learned, I learned from watching Bob Newhart.  Ask Frau Schmitt.  She is usually right about these things.

The back garden at La Belle Esplanade

Last night, two of our guests dined at Santa Fe Restaurant, up the street.  A famous actor was sitting at the table next to theirs.  It wasn't Bob Newhart and it wasn't Gina Lollobrigida, but you never know who you'll bump into on Esplanade Avenue.  When you are an innkeeper in New Orleans, you hear and share a lot of stories.

The coffee table in Les Saintes Suite

A votre sante,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.