Good, Good Times in New Orleans

Your humble narrator

Some people want to know what Frau Schmitt and your humble narrator look like before they check in.  We include pictures of ourselves on our website, but I was in the lobby snapping pics the other day and decided to take a picture of myself in the mirror.  You can't really read it well in the picture above, but the mirror says, "Saint or Sinner?"  It's a more probing question when you look in the mirror yourself, gentle reader, and answer it honestly.

We have bright green geckos scurrying around New Orleans during all the warm months.  They are cheerful little lizards.  We've had geckos this year, too, but not as many as I remember during last year.  Instead, this year seems to be The Year of the Skink.  There are tiny skinks scuttling around everywhere I look, not just around our gardens in the back, but in City Park and in the neutral ground, too.  It's The Year of the Skink.

We usually have ample on-street parking in front of our inn for people who choose to drive to New Orleans.  We had some guests this week though that needed a lot of room.  They had some very interesting tales about how they got here:



The song came first and it hit #1 in 1975 and 1976 on both the country and pop charts.  Then, a movie was written around it, to flesh out the details of the story.  For our younger readers, if you could have been alive in 1975, you would have heard this song every twenty minutes on the radio.  It was during the CB radio craze.  Truckers were blue collar heroes.  They are still heroes, of course, but they are unsung ones.  Few people own CB radios anymore, that's what our phones are for.

Our recent guests were recreating the highlights of this classic film.  We live in a quiet residential neighborhood so there isn't a lot of space to park a convoy of big rigs.  They made do, parking at a truckstop on Elysian Fields Avenue and then taking taxis to our house.  Nice folks, all, as one would expect.  Hearty appetites, too.  

Shadow of a lady

There was a shadow cast on our front shutter the other morning.  It wasn't a mysterious shadow.  Some people ask if our inn is haunted.  Our answer: No.  Not that we've ever been able to ascertain, at least.  We've had no reports.  It was a beautiful shadow, however, as most things about our house are.  It's source:

La Belle d'Esplanade

The light in August is beautiful, if I can quote William Faulkner, who used to live in the French Quarter.  Faulkner wrote his first novel while he lived in New Orleans.  This tidbit isn't germaine to what I'm going to tell you next, but I thought I would throw it into the mix.

The novel was called, "Soldier's Pay."

We love New Orleans in August because it's the slow season here.  The lines are shorter or nonexistent.  The price for most things goes down.  You can get a three course lunch for $20.15.  Not a bad deal.  You can enjoy the city like a New Orleanian without the distractions of festivals and conventions and cruise ships disgorging their passengers.  You can see what it is like to love the city on it's own terms, at its worst, when the temperature is in the mid-90s and the humidity is high enough that you'll never feel dry.  It's a paradise.

We love August also because this is the month during which we open the next year's calendar.  I just opened the calendar for next year today.  If you are thinking about visiting New Orleans next year, for Mardi Gras, for French Quarter Fest, for Jazz Fest, for Labor Day, for Voodoo Fest, or for Thanksgiving, this is the time to make a reservation.  Everything is wide open as I write this except for the reservation Alan just made for the last week in January.  He's going to get a firm and hearty handshake when next we meet.  Welcome back.

We're doing some renovations on one of our suites this month.  Les Saintes Suite will soon be Les Pêches Suite.  We're going with a fish theme in the future.  I haven't said anything so far and haven't posted any pictures because it isn't done yet.  There aren't any pictures to take.  Les Pêches will have a queen bed, though, as all the front suites will now have.  The front suites (Les Fleurs, Clio, and Les Pêches) are larger, they have queen beds, they have luxury sheets and soaps, and they have balconies that overlook picturesque Esplanade Avenue.  They cost a tad more than the smaller suites in the back of the house but we try to make them worth it.  We are not the least expensive lodging option, but we are not the most expensive either.  We offer plenty of lagniappe.

As of this writing, we have been ranked the #1 B&B on Trip Advisor for 16 months and counting.  As I've said before, we don't like to boast about it.  We try to avoid bad juju.  We just try to offer honest value and a memorable experience while you stay with us.  Our guests seem to agree that we are doing what we set out to do.  We would like to thank all of our guests who have written reviews, not only on Trip Advisor, but also on bedandbreakfast.com, and other travel sites.  We are happy to be ambassadors to everyone who is interested in this magical city we call home.

I promised a 70s flashback to another Top 10 hit a few posts ago.  Luckily, we haven't had any guests looking to relive this particular moment in history:

If you were alive in 1974, you would have heard this song every twenty minutes on the radio.  Good memories, my friends, good memories, but not as good as the memories made at La Belle Esplanade.  For better or for worse, neither Frau Schmitt nor I have ever seen a streaker on Esplanade Avenue.  We live on a picturesque street in a quiet neighborhood.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.