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.