Les Fleurs Suite at La Belle Esplanade

Nothing is cookie-cutter here.  We don't like to call La Belle Esplanade a bed and breakfast because it isn't Grandma's house stuffed full of antiques and gewgaws and knickknacks and puffinstuff.  Life is too short to live in a shabby museum.  Les Fleurs Suite at La Belle Esplanade is unique, the way everything about La Belle Esplanade is unique.

We prefer to call La Belle Esplanade a tiny artisanal hotel.  The design and decor are unique, the service is personalized, you'll visit New Orleans like you belong here.  You do belong here.

Words to live by.

Unlike any hotel.

All this and more.  Visit New Orleans like you belong here.

Les Fleurs Suite at La Belle Esplanade is on the ground floor of the house.  It has two main rooms separated by pocket doors that slide into the walls.  It's pretty cool.  

A view of the sitting room in Les Fleurs Suite.

The private sitting room is the perfect place to look up historical things in our neighborhood and hatch plans for the day's adventures.  Both the sitting room and the bedroom have decorative fireplaces that are original to this 1883 mansion.

The private bath is equipped with an antique claw foot tub that has a shower.  There is a private porch that faces Esplanade Avenue.  Les Fleurs Suite at La Belle Esplanade is in the front of the house.  

All our suites have all the amenities you would expect from a boutique hotel.  One of the amenities that you can't get from any other hotel, though, is the authentic experience of staying in a real New Orleans neighborhood.

Privacy on the porch behind the wild ginger.

When you sit on your suite's private front porch, tucked behind the wild ginger bushes, you'll live what it's like to be in love with New Orleans.  When people walk by, they'll say hello.  They'll compliment your house.  You don't have to tell them it isn't your house.  La Belle Esplanade is the headquarters for your New Orleans adventures.  Be a New Orleanian.

Everyone thinks we speak French in New Orleans.  "Les Fleurs Suite" at La Belle Esplanade means The Flower Suite.  We try to make our suites as interesting as this wonderful city we call home.  You never know what pleasant surprise you'll find if you pay attention.  Good memories are made every day in New Orleans.  The best memories are made at La Belle Esplanade.  

Back-to-back winner of the TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Award, La Belle Esplanade has been named the #2 small inn in the United States and #16 in the world.  Go to our website to read more about Les Fleurs Suite and more about La Belle, itself.  We live in a beautiful mansion in a very, very interesting part of New Orleans. 

A typical breakfast at La Belle Esplanade.  Good food and good conversation.

Innkeeper Endorses Trump!!

Fool riding a goat

I thought we needed a boost in blog traffic so I wrote an interesting headline for today's installment.  I'm not really endorsing a future President Trump.  While we do have freewheeling conversations around the breakfast table every morning, and I don't necessarily discourage the topic of politics as much as curtail it, you'll never know my political leanings.  Your humble narrator is a cipher when it comes to my politics.  I have a long history of being a man of mystery and I don't want to let the cat out of the bag now. 

The image above comes from an ongoingly updated archive of medieval manuscript illuminations from Discarding Images.  Let it never be said that your humble narrator doesn't have a variety of variegated interests.

Now, what were we talking about?

The spirit of New Orleans

Our favorite painter, Whalehead King, who has executed (and I use that word justly) most of the original artwork in our inn, is working on a new masterpiece for La France Suite.  It's gonna be a real kinger-dinger!  I was in his studio tonight to get a glimpse of his sketches and the progress he's made so far on the 4'x4' canvas that's going to hang over the bedroom (non-working) decorative fireplace in La France Suite.

The fireplace used to work when our inn was built, but that was over 130 years ago.  There is a fireplace in every room in our house but none of them contain fires.  You provide the spark that burns in your heart when you fall in love with New Orleans.

We asked Whalehead King to replace the Degas print that's hanging there currently and he happily said he was able to figuratively blow the roof off this project.  Here is a photo of what the new original painting will be replacing:

Cotton brokers in New Orleans à la Degas

If you want to see a reproduction of that painting, you can stay at the Degas House, which is a wedding venue and bed and breakfast a block away from our inn.  If you want to see the original, you'll have to visit Ville de Pau, in France.  I read French better than I speak it but I don't read French all that well.  If you want to read the extensive English wikipedia entry on Pau, well, here ya go.  It seems like an interesting place, all things considered.  As interesting as New Orleans?  Regular readers of this blog already know the answer to that question.  I don't need to belabor the obvious.

If this is a bit of an itsy bitsy teeny weeny short entry today, it's because it's French Quarter Festival this weekend.  Ask any innkeeper in New Orleans and they'll be happy to tell you that this is their busiest month!  I don't know what other innkeepers do to keep themselves so busy when nobody is checking in or out because the house if full for the weekend, but it's a good excuse for me to write a short entry.  I know what Frau Schmitt and I have been doing and she says it's free time well spent.  She is usually right about these things.

So there you have it.  If you want to see original artwork, produced locally, so locally you can smell the turpentine wafting over our back garden, you know where to find us.  We're a block away from the Degas house and a mile outside the French Quarter.  Try getting a quiet night's sleep in the Quarter this weekend!

To all of our American friends who live in states that haven't had primaries yet, remember to go out and vote for your man when the time comes.  Oh, you can vote for a woman, too, this year so far if you are so inclined.  A little birdie told me that.  I'm not making any endorsements.   

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade
...where every day is a curated breakfast salon.

A Small City Called New Orleans

New Orleans ain't whatcha think

I took the snapshot above from the roof of the New Orleans Athletic Club on North Rampart Street a few months ago.  The peach colored building, an old established electrical parts warehouse, is torn down as I write this.  What's going to replace it?  A hotel, of course.  We really only have one industry in New Orleans to speak of.  Thanks for coming down to visit.

North Rampart Street itself is all torn up and mostly closed to traffic as I write this.  There is going to be a new streetcar line that will run down N. Rampart Street as far as Elysian Fields Avenue by the end of this year.

Let's provide a little soundtrack video, shall we?



You won't believe this when you meet me, but I used to have the same haircut as the Fun Boy 3 singer.  I still have the same pants.  I sometimes wear them for breakfast.  At the ripe old age of 50, I have a hard time pulling off that haircut unless I've just rolled out of bed.  Now you know why I always wear a hat.

The jolly innkeeper

New Orleans is a real city, though it is sometimes hard for people to fathom that fact.  It doesn't look like any city I've ever lived in.  In a lot of ways, it is a giant town.  Frau Schmitt and I are always bumping into people we know as we run errands around the city.

Frau Schmitt's brother lives in China.  He told a co-worker who is from New Orleans that his sister runs a boutique inn in the middle of Esplanade Avenue.  He told his co-worker that the inn is one of three colorful houses on our street.  His co-worker said he knew exactly where he was talking about and he emailed Frau Schmitt's brother a picture.  Guess what the picture was of?  It was this:

La Belle Esplanade

I'm not suggesting that we are locally famous.  We aren't.  Our address is notable, however.  When you stay with us, you'll be staying in a local landmark.  Bus tours, bicycle tours, and walking tours stop in front of our house every day to admire our inn.  It can be a pain in the neck but it's mostly unobtrusive.  

Some people, our guests mainly, call your humble narrator The Jolly Innkeeper.  That's better than what some of our innkeeper compatriots are called.  It's better than being called the Solemn Innkeeper, The Distracted Innkeeper, the Sullen Innkeeper, Mr. Wet Blanket, The Souse,  Johnny-Come-Late, Saggy Pants, or That-Creepy-Lady-Who-Ripped-Us-Off.

Jolly Innkeeper has a nice ring to it when you consider the other possibilities that are tossed around by people who stay at other lodging options, including those offered on AirB&B.

Whenever someone calls me The Jolly Innkeeper, it reminds me of that Franz Hals painting:

The Jolly Toper

Whenever I think of that painting, it gives me hat envy.

I'd like to take this opportunity to mention, humbly and nonchalantly, that we've been ranked the #1 inn in New Orleans, and in all of Louisiana, for 23 months now.  If we can make it to April, that will be a solid two years being #1.  Thanks to everyone who has reviewed their stay with us.  Sincere thanks from the bottomless wells of our unsullied hearts.  We don't take it lightly.

He's looking at the future

Happily, we haven't yet been cited as a dangerous voice at the Dangerous Speech Project.  Why would we be?  We're all about love on Esplanade Avenue, love of New Orleans.  If you want to know what it is like to love where we live, you've found the right place.  Good memories are made on our street.

New Orleans' population is still about a 100,000 people less than it was before Katrina.  People who stay in the French Quarter and the Garden District are all, like, "Hey, what's all the fuss about?  Everything looks like it's 100% back from the flooding."  It isn't.  There is still plenty of work to be done.  We are part of a gigantic rebuilding project that is reforming New Orleans in more ways than one while trying to keep true to the spirit and traditions of the city.  There is no place else like New Orleans.  It really is magical here.

If you want to visit New Orleans to learn what it is like to be a part of this cadre of civic imagineers, La Belle Esplanade is open to host you and to help curate your New Orleans experience.  We won't just steer you to the Quarter or to Frenchmen Street, the lazy way.  We'll tell you about places that most tourists don't even know exist.  It always makes us happy when people go off the Convention and Visitors Bureau map.  That's why we provide different maps to navigate the city.  We enjoy the company of urban explorers and cultural connoisseurs.



You can follow whatever NOLA you want to.  As innkeepers, we aren't here to judge.  Our job is to help you find what you are looking for.  We live in a kaleidoscopic city that presents different viewpoints from every possible angle.  It's bewildering sometimes until you get used to it.  You will find what you are looking for in New Orleans, especially if what you are looking for is good memories.

Wherever you are in the world, if you say you are going to New Orleans everyone will know where you mean.  It really is magical here.  It's a small city that is world famous for a reason.  It really is magical here.  See for yourself.  

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade
...where every morning hosts a curated breakfast salon. 

Where the Rest Comes Easy

The scene of the crime

I don't know who started the rumor that Shania Twain stayed at our house last weekend, but I'm here to quash it.  She didn't.  Neither Frau Schmitt nor your humble narrator has ever met Ms. Twain, nor do we expect to meet her any time in the future.  One never knows, though. 

If you were wondering what the main hallway looks like at Auld Sweet Olive Bed and Breakfast, well, your curiosity has been satisfied above.  I don't know how Nancy got the rights to sweetolive.com, but I consider that to be a bit of a coup.  That's a nice url.  The Lookout Inn has a nice web address, too: lookoutneworleans.com.  That's what Kelly and Mark said the day they opened the front door from the inside for the first time: "Look out New Orleans!"  They've been doing good work from that day onward.

When we first opened, we considered calling La Belle Esplanade the Shady Rest Hotel.


It turns out that there already is a Shady Rest Hotel, albeit not in New Orleans, or even in the U.S. for that matter.  It's located in Port Morsby.  Where?  It's a city of over 300,000 people in Papua New Guinea.  It's the 139th most livable city out of 140.  

Do you know what people in Louisiana like to say when we read our state's ranking in any quality of life survey?  They say, "Thank goodness for Mississippi."  No matter how badly Louisiana performs in rates of infant mortality, education levels, drinking water quality, income inequality, cases of incest, unemployment, literacy, FASD, what have you, take your pick, we always have the Magnolia State ranked just below us at #50.  Thank goodness for Mississippi.

That's how the people in Port Morsby feel about Dhaka, which is the capital of Bangladesh, if you didn't know.   The Guardian (a British newspaper, if you didn't know) calls Port Morsby the world's worst city.  Maybe they haven't heard of Dhaka.  ---No, they have; at the time, Port Morsby was ranked the world's worst city, Dhaka was two slots above it, with Karachi sandwiched in between.  Karachi is the capital of Pakistan, if you didn't know.

The one way in which Louisiana beats Mississippi in their mutual race to the bottom of every ranking, and in which Louisiana beats everywhere else in the world, for that matter, is that Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate.  That's right.  More people are imprisoned per capita in Louisiana than any other place in the world.  Some people will tell you that this statistic indicates that it's safer here than any other place in the world.  Makes you want to visit, doesn't it?  

An interesting map

As you can see on the map, Louisiana is the only state to earn a solid dark navy blue color scheme.  Take that, Mississippi.  God bless Louisiana.  


Let's lighten up this conversation a little:




I've been meaning to go to Meyer the Hatter for the past couple of weeks, not because I need a new hat but only because I want one.  Wanting a new hat isn't a very good reason to buy one when a man already owns about twenty hats.  I do wear them all, however.  It's not like I collect them to get dusty on a shelf; I put them to good use covering my head.  A lot of people think I'm bald because they never see me without a hat.  I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor.

Thanksgiving Day is the opening day of horse racing season in New Orleans and everyone goes to the track (which is a ten-minute walk from our house) dressed to the nines.  Many of the men wore top hats this year, as they do every year.  In New Orleans, you can wear a top hat any time of year and no one will bat an eye.  

You can wear a blue homburg and nobody will bat an eye either.  In fact, you might just get a compliment or five over the course of running errands around the city.

You can't be afraid of color

I'll never forget when Eisenhower and Nixon both wore homburgs while toasting each other with tea during the 1953 inauguration, but I digress, as I sometimes do.

This has nothing to do with New Orleans

I haven't purchased a top hat yet because I don't really have occasion to wear one, not that anyone really needs to have a reason to top off an outfit with a topper.  

I've decided that the next time I go to a Christmas party at Auld Sweet Olive Bed and Breakfast, I'm going to wear a top hat.  I've got a year to think about it.  Regular readers will be kept updated on my decision-making process and dithering over the course of the next year.  If that isn't a good enough reason to stay tuned to this blog, I can't think of a better one.  I hope Nancy invites us next year.  If not, I'll just wear my new top hat at a jaunty angle around the city.

I'm biased, of course, but I think you'll enjoy visiting New Orleans. I don't know anything about you, dear reader, but I'm confident making that prediction because everyone loves New Orleans.  We live in a magical city.  From what I hear, it's much nicer here than in Port Morsby in Papua New Guinea.  It's more pleasant than Dhaka, too.  It's no Anatevka.


  
What have we got here?  A little bit of this, a little bit of that.  A pot, a pan, a broom, and more than one hat.

We look forward to meeting you.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade (labelleesplanade.com)