New Orleans is for lovers.

What do you have going on?  If you were in New Orleans right now, you'd have a whole lot of something-something going on.  Hee-e-e-e-e.  What happens in New Orleans belongs in New Orleans.  It couldn't happen anywhere else.  New Orleans isn't like anywhere else.  New Orleans is special.

Look up in New Orleans,  You never know what you'll find when you turn a corner.

Chin up, buttercup.  Everything comes up roses and oleander in New Orleans.  Welcome to the New Orleans state of mind.  Nothing is saccharine or lachrymose about the real New Orleans.  Ours is a city of crescendos and pathos without the bathos.  

Nothing is whitewashed in New Orleans.  There is dirty laundry everywhere, for everyone to see.  Everyone who lives in New Orleans knows the what the city's flag looks like.

If you can't be happy in New Orleans, you should see a shrink  If you are bored in New Orleans, you have a hole in your head.  If you can't find anything to eat in New Orleans, you must be dead.  

You need to reset your New Orleans relationship.  Get your head on straight when it comes to all things New Orleans-related.  New Orleans is what you make of it.  New Orleans is very, very good.

New Orleans is a city of omens and hoodoo signs.

Where have you been all your life?  I know where you should have been.  New Orleans is waiting for you to show up.  That'll be half the battle.  Victory awaits those who choose to live in a New Orleans state of mind.  I know.  I live here.

You can pussyfoot around the truth until the cows come home but the truth is that New Orleans is beyond ordinary in every extraordinary way.  New Orleans turned up the gas in the hot-cha-cha.  If you are bored in New Orleans you have a hole in your heart.  Only skinflints and soulflints don't find love in New Orleans.  

La Belle Esplanade: The #1-rated small personalized hotel in New Orleans.  You belong here.  This is real New Orleans.

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Visit New Orleans like you live here.  When you are ready to visit this wonderful city we call home, La Belle Esplanade is the #1 place to stay in the city.  We don't say that.  TripAdvisor has been saying it every month since April 2014.  Check our website.  See what we have to offer.  You belong in the real New Orleans.  The best New Orleans memories begin at La Belle Esplanade.  

Follow La Belle Esplanade on Facebook and on Instagram.  We post regularly to help keep you in a New Orleans state of mind until you get here.  Once you arrive, you'll be in the thick of authentic New Orleans.  Don't worry about alligators.  Don't worry about having a good time.  Everything will take care of itself.  New Orleans loves you.  Trust me.  I live here.  I see it every day.

Go to La Belle Esplanade's website.  It isn't just a bed and breakfast hotel. like New Orleans itself, it is an adventure into all that is good in this world.  We only have five suites so we tend to fill up early.  Plan ahead, pick your dates (no one ever says their visit to New Orleans is too long) and make a reservation to make some good memories in an authentic New Orleans state of mind.

Get Yourself To New Orleans.

Keep your eyes as open as your ears in New Orleans.  You never know what you'll see in the jazz choreography of architecture and joie de vivre that makes up New Orleans' cityscape.  Be open-hearted.  New Orleans will treat you right as rain.  Get yourself to New Orleans.

The sun always shines in New Orleans.  Every day is bright.  The future beckons around every street corner.  When you have New Orleans in your heart you are ripe for love.  New Orleans is made up of miles and miles and miles of heart.  It is impossible to keep a world-class city down.

Anywhere in the world, if you tell someone, anyone, that you are headed for New Orleans, they will know where you are going and they'll congratulate you.  It is a dream come true for most people.

GET YOURSELF TO NEW ORLEANS.

There is no place so unique as New Orleans.  Ours is a city where dreams do come true.  It can happen to you.

Steamboat gothic is New Orleans perfect.

Real New Orleans is more magical than you think.  Real New Orleans is more colorful than you think.  Wander around Esplanade Avenue and its surrounding streets and you'll find yourself enraptured in an authentic New Orleans state of mind.  Pleasant surprises are around every corner.  New Orleans is a city filled with whimsy.  New Orleans is a city full of homegrown traditions.  New Orleans is an epiphany.  Get your good self to New Orleans.  You really do belong here.

EVERY DAY IS GOOD IN NEW ORLEANS.

The sun always shines in New Orleans.

Candy cake bushes and trumpet flower trees, dancing funerals and street art, world-famous restaurants where you least expect them---- after five nights in New Orleans you'll be humming jazz in your sleep.  You belong here.  New Orleans is calling you.  You deserve to treat yourself right.

Dixie beer, king cake, gumbo, barbecue brisket, New Orleans barbecue shrimp, bread pudding, Abita Amber and Mardi Gras fi-yi-yi baby dolls.  If none of what I've said makes any sense to you, it will make sense after you spend enough time in New Orleans.  You need to spend a lot of time in New Orleans before this wonderful city we call home makes more than tourist-trap sense.  I know I live here.  Until it clicks, enjoy the ride.  New Orleans is very, very good.

Get yourself to New Orleans and you'll learn what it means to fall in love with New Orleans.  The longer you stay, the more you'll fall in love.  You should stay at La Belle Esplanade.

Kit-Kat knows which way the wind blows.  Get yourself to New Orleans while you can.

You belong in the real New Orleans.  There is more to New Orleans than meets the eye.  Follow your heart.  Listen to your inner voice.  Listen deeply and listen well.  When New Orleans calls, you have to answer----New Orleans is a force of human nature.  

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Visit New Orleans like you live here.  When you are ready to visit this wonderful city we call home, La Belle Esplanade is the #1 place to stay in the city.  We don't say that.  TripAdvisor has been saying it every month since April 2014.  Check our website.  See what we have to offer.  You belong in the real New Orleans.  The best New Orleans memories begin at La Belle Esplanade.  

Follow La Belle Esplanade on Facebook and on Instagram.  We post regularly to help keep you in a New Orleans state of mind until you get here.  Once you arrive, you'll be in the thick of authentic New Orleans.  Don't worry about alligators.  Don't worry about having a good time.  Everything will take care of itself.  New Orleans loves you.  Trust me.  I live here.  I see it every day.

A Day In the Life Of a Real New Orleanian

I would tell you what I did today but you wouldn't believe it.  Let me tell you about a day in the life of a real New Orleanian.  You will think that my life, living in New Orleans as I do, is much more interesting than your life wherever you live.  You are probably right but not in the ways that you think.  We all have our crosses to bear.

Would you like to know what I did today?  

Okay.  Full disclosure: I, your humble narrator, have been invited to ghostwrite this blog post.  Full disclaimer: All of the characters portrayed in the following description of my day are fictional and any relation to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  That's just the way we roll here in New Orleans.  Full admission: It is all true.

I will tell you the true story of a day in the life of a real New Orleanian.  I will tell you this:

I got out of bet before the sun was up.  I cleaned up with a splash of bay rum, dressed, and walked the dog.  The dog and I went up to City Park, at the end of our street.  In the morning, usually around 6:00-6:45, some time in there, we are walking around Big Lake, which, well, is the big lake on the downriver side of the Esplanade Avenue entrance to City Park, you know: the good one, not the one across from Ralph's-on-the-Park.  I wouldn't walk a dog in that neighborhood.

I got on my motor scooter and went to pick up fresh bread and pastry.  

Your humble narrator out on patrol.

I had good conversations over breakfast.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  When you have breakfast where I have breakfast, then we'll have breakfast tomorrow.  It will be a curated breakfast of local delicacies from around our neighborhood.  How do I know?  I go out on my motor scooter to pick everything up, that's how.

Being a New Orleans goodwill ambassador is a calling.

I walked the dog, again.  This time we went way, way back in City Park.  It isn't a part of City Park where tourists go.  It's way, way out where nobody goes, a secret trail network in City Park.  I would tell you where it is but I don't want the trails to get crowded with other people who are scared off by a dog off a leash.  Plus, I now don't want the City Park Police to go looking for me now that I've admitted I let the dog off his leash.

I went to the New Orleans Athletic Club where I swam a few laps under fountains, took a long steam, and got a massage.

I saw a puppet show.

My lovely wife, who is the better half of this operation, and I had lunch at Café Degas, just up the street from our address.  It is super-duper romantic in there, that's why we like it.  The food is excellent, too.  I had snails because they are good for your kidneys. I also had crab and asparagus soup.  I also had the hanger steak---it's the best hanger steak in town, even better than Gabrielle's. so you know I'm serious when I'm saying it's good.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A REAL NEW ORLEANIAN 

(PART II)

I bumped into someone I know on the street.  Imagine that!  She told me that she had moved in two blocks away from here last week.  That's great.  It is always nice to have good neighbors.  Our part of New Orleans is full of them.

I had a heart-to-heart talk with one of my old neighbors.  He and I have a lot of respect for each other.  Scratch anyone who lives here and you will find a New Orleanian underneath.  Home is where the heart is.  If you can't be friends, at least be good neighbors.  Love makes New Orleans go around.

I stopped in for a nice cold Dixie at Pirogue's.  While I was there, I made small talk with a woman named Destiny.  She asked me if I wanted to go up to Liuzza's-by-the-Track for a bowl of gumbo.  I had to tell her that I was still full from lunch.

On my way home, I helped two kids get their kite unstuck from a tree.  The kite was just a stick-and-construction paper affair but, luckily, I had some scotch tape in my pocket to make the necessary repairs to get aloft again.  Who dat?

Then I came home.  Now, I am writing this blog post to tell you about my day thus far.  What will happen next?  That is for me to know and for you to find out.  If you want to spend a day in your life as a real New Orleanian, you have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.  Visit like you belong here.

Stay at La Belle Esplanade and enjoy a curated breakfast over good conversation, get personalized about everything and everywhere New Orleans that you want to know about.  Then, go out and have some New Orleans adventures all your own.  You never know what you'll find when you turn a corner in this wonderful city we call home.  Sometimes it's a parade, sometimes it's some kids putting on a sock puppet show in a washing machine box.  Everything will make you smile.

Keep yourself in a New Orleans state of mind and you'll make good memories worth keeping there rest of your life.  Be a New Orleanian when you are in New Orleans and spend a day in the life of a real New Orleanian.  It will be hard to wipe that grin off your face when you're done.

Here's a video I took in City Park when I was walking the dog way, way back:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o395cmxMgPQ

Alligators in New Orleans.

You never know what you'll find when you turn a corner in New Orleans.  The city has posted warning signs around open water that alligators may be in the area.  There are alligators in New Orleans.  Everyone who lives here knows that.  We don't see them very often, though.  The signs seem much ado about nothing.

Alligators in area.

It's not that I've never seen an alligator in the city proper, though they are sighted in Bayou St. John, in Bayou Sauvage, in the drainage canals, and in Lake Pontchartrain.  They are very rarely seen in the Mississippi River.  The river isn't their natural habitat.

The last time I saw an alligator, I was in the back stretches of City Park.  Now that was a story to remember.  Just remembering it still makes my hair stand on end.

It's a much more memorable story than seeing a sign posted on a placid waterway in the most peaceable of cities in a residential neighborhood that hasn't seen an alligator attack for 100 years:

You get what you expect.  If you want to walk through New Orleans on tenterhooks, senses on red alert, you'll be disappointed.  You'll be high strung but everyone else won't know what you're worried about.  Good things happen in New Orleans.  They happen every day.  We live in a kaleidoscope of a city.

Where does all the crime and the petty theft happen?  Where the tourists are.  Where all the drunks and the easy marks are.  No one in authentic New Orleans, the real city outside the French Quarter and off Frenchmen Street is hiding behind a bush waiting for nobody to show up----it isn't a cost-effective use of the criminal's time when the easy pickings are where the tourists are.

Only tourists think there are alligators lurking in every puddle.  They think we eat gumbo with a side of jambalaya three meals a day.  New Orleans isn't like that.  New Orleans is better than anything you've learned from movies or books or TV.  

Dreams come true on Esplanade Avenue.  It can happen to you.

Mmmm....  Somebody is cooking gumbo next door right now.  It's kitchen sink gumbo, full of crab bodies and chicken thighs and sausage and okra and dark, dark roux.  Don't believe everything you've learned about New Orleans until you get your good self down here to experience it yourself.  There is tourist New Orleans and there is real New Orleans.  I live here.  I prefer the real New Orleans.  You will, too.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Visit New Orleans like you live here.  When you are ready to visit this wonderful city we call home, La Belle Esplanade is the #1 place to stay in the city.  We don't say that.  TripAdvisor has been saying it every month since April 2014.  Check our website.  See what we have to offer.  You belong in the real New Orleans.  The best New Orleans memories begin at La Belle Esplanade.  

Follow La Belle Esplanade on Facebook and on Instagram.  We post regularly to help keep you in a New Orleans state of mind until you get here.  Once you arrive, you'll be in the thick of authentic New Orleans.  Don't worry about alligators.  Don't worry about having a good time.  Everything will take care of itself.  New Orleans loves you.  Trust me.  I live here.  I see it every day.