We Live on a Beautiful Street in New Orleans

The park across the street from our house

I was looking over the list of all the B&Bs in New Orleans.  The vast majority of them list Bed & Breakfast in their names.  Second-most popular is Inn.  Then there is House, Maison, and Courtyard.  There is one Quarters, and one Row.  Ours is the only one that is just a name without reference to the property itself: La Belle Esplanade.

I never noticed this before.  Our boutique New Orleans inn [a little keyword stuffing there] is named after our street.  We aren't selling  rooms, even if that's what you think you are buying when you make a reservation.  We are selling our neighborhood.  We love where we live.  It always makes me happy when our guests stroll around the neighborhood.

Mind you, I am going to say it again, just as I try to say it as frankly as I can on our website, we are not in the French Quarter.  If you want to stay in the French Quarter, there are places a scant mile from our house where you can stay.  If you do stay in the French Quarter, we hope you'll take a stroll up Esplanade Avenue.  Make sure you take a picture of our house.  Everyone else does.

Esplanade Avenue is known as the Creole St. Charles Avenue.  It isn't as long as St. Charles Avenue, and there isn't as much to do, commercially speaking, as in the neighborhoods around St. Charles Avenue, but Esplanade Avenue, and Tremé, have their own delights.

A house on Esplanade Avenue

An esplanade, according to Webster's, as they say, is a level open stretch of paved or grassy ground, especially one designed for walking.  Everywhere else in the world, esplanade is pronounced 'ess-plah-NAHD."  In New Orleans, where everything is different, it is pronounced 'ess-plan-AID."  If you are looking to pronounce our name correctly, we are La Belle Esplanade on Esplanade Avenue.

As a flaneur, I always appreciate an esplanade.  According to Webster's, a flaneur is an idle man-about-town.  I don't know how much I agree with that, no matter how much I resemble that definition.  Like Charles Baudelaire, I prefer to think of a flaneur as someone who makes it his occupation to walk the city streets, getting caught up in their ephemeral scenes.

Charles Baudelaire

If you stay in our Les Fleurs Suite [see the link at the top of this page] you'll find a copy of my favorite book by Baudelaire.  It's a charmer titled, "Les Fleurs de Mal."  What's that in English?  "The Flowers of Evil."  Love poems.  

Tremé is a fascinating neighborhood, even though it isn't the ritziest in the city.  It's predominantly working class, though that is changing.  The new Lafitte Greenway will open later this year.  It's going to change a lot of things in the neighborhood, not just the demographics.  For now, though, behind our house are two famous restaurants, a lot of history, and a ton of details piled up over the centuries.  That's enough.

Up the street from us, toward City Park, there are more restaurants and coffee shops, two grocery stores, a wine bar, and a laundromat. If you need to do laundry during your stay, we have a laundry room on site.  It costs a $1.25 to wash and $1.25 to dry.  We'll provide the detergent if you need it.

Let's end with a little Baudelaire, shall we?

Correspondences

Nature is a temple in which living pillars 

Sometimes give voice to confused words; 

Man passes there through forests of symbols 

Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance 

In a deep and tenebrous unity, 

Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, 

Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,

Sweet as oboes, green as meadows

— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,

Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin, 

That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

-Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade, a New Orleans bed and breakfast.