Good Photo Subjects in New Orleans

2200 block of Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans

For regular readers, it must get a bit dull having me post pictures of our inn over and over.  Thanks for coming back.  I can't help myself.  I take pictures of the house all the time.  Even though it's the same subject, I never get tired of it.  Bear with me.

One man says this is the most beautiful house in New Orleans

I'm also used to getting my picture taken when I'm standing in front of the house.  Naturally, I can't do it myself, but when I was taking the picture above, there was a tour bus stopped behind me.  Somebody has a picture of the house with my best side facing them.  

Sometimes, I'm waiting for guests to show up on the front stoop, and a car will pull up in front of the house and come to an abrupt halt.  It isn't our guests.  It's somebody who wants to take a picture of our house.  I can't blame them.  I wave.

2212 Esplanade Avenue

When our next-door neighbor added the bright yellow shutters to his blue house, we entered into a kind of competition.  Everybody stopped to take pictures of his house as the most colorful house on Esplanade Avenue.  He and I were playing pinochle one night when he bet me that I wouldn't paint our house a brighter color.  Frau Schmitt egged me on to accept his bet.  She is usually right about these things, so I did.  

So, 2216 Esplanade Avenue was painted orange with blue shutters.

Some gentlemen prefer redheads

After we had raised the pigment quotient on our block of Esplanade Avenue, our neighbor on the other side decided to get into the act and take it to another level.  Now everybody's taking pictures of the green house.

2222 Esplanade Avenue

It's a neighborly contest to see who can paint his or her house the brightest.  I hear that the guy at 2212 and his wife have a new scheme in mind... a new color scheme!  At least, that's the story they tell on some of the bicycle tours that stop in front of our house.

None of it is true.

If you want to take a bicycle tour of Esplanade Ridge with a reputable guide, I'd like to recommend Crescent City Bike Tours.  I know Kristine.  She and I got our tour guide licenses together, so we're sort of blood-somethings.  She knows her history and she can tell a story.  She lives here.  Not here on Esplanade Avenue, but you know what I mean.  

Out of 167 New Orleans activities, Crescent City Bike Tours is rated #16 on Trip Advisor as of this writing.  Let me tell you, they are better than the current No. 1, whoever that is.  I listen to their tall tales about five times a day.  Kristine will tell you the truth.  She's not paying me to say this.  She doesn't even know I'm doing it.

From what I've heard, rankings on Trip Advisor have to do with an algorithm of reviews.   Crescent City Bikes, as we like to call them around the innkeeper's water cooler, hasn't been open for too, too long.  It's like Frau Schmitt likes to say when I'm watching a pot of spaghetti, "Everything takes time." She is usually right about these things.  

Sometimes, I interrupt Frau Schmitt when she's whisking meringue.  "The cream rises to the top," she'll say, and she's usually right about that, too.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of my bike tour guide friend.  I'll have to leave you with this, instead:

Tammie the Housekeeper

Tammie the Housekeeper sez: "It's quality, not quantity, that counts."

A votre santé,

La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.