Le Pelican Suite at La Belle Esplanade

Louisiana's state bird is the pelican.  If you've ever seen a Louisiana state flag, you know it features a bit of heraldry known as "A Pelican In Its Piety."  Underneath the image of a mother pelican piercing her breast to feed her three young fledglings is a banner that reads the Louisiana state motto:  "Union.  Justice.  Confidence."  These are words by which every Louisianan, native or adopted, strives to live.

The sitting room in Le Pelican Suite at La Belle Esplanade, New Orleans, Louisiana.

New Orleans is in Louisiana, of course.  You'll find pelicans here.  I see them in City Park, at the end of our street, all the time.  They are majestic.

Le Pelican Suite at La Belle Esplanade is not full of stuffed pelicans, either taxidermy or plush toys.  While there are pelican motifs throughout the suite, the name, like the Louisiana state motto is more an aspirational guide to the decor.

The symbol for the 1984 New Orleans World Fair was a cartoon pelican but you won't find any evidence of that at La Belle Esplanade.  Our suite is all about romance and comfort.  

The entrance to Le Pelican Suite, which is located on the second floor of this colorful mansion, is a short vestibule with the private bath's entrance on one side.  After the vestibule is a sitting room, a comfortable place for two people to hatch plans for the day ahead, and an equally comfortable place for one person to read this blog while his or her partner is taking a private bath.

There is also a bedroom, of course, that features an antique plantation-sized bed.  To call a bed "plantation-sized" is bed and breakfast talk for "slightly larger than a full-sized bed."  No one ever complains the bed is too small.  You have never slept in a bed this well made in your life, unless you happen to live in a museum.

A capacious antique plantation-sized bed with all the trimmings.

Besides a sitting room, a bedroom, and a private bath, Le Pelican Suite also has a private balcony that overlooks the neighborhood, surrounded by oleander.  Oleander is the tree and flower that official represents New Orleans.  It smells sweet as ambrosia when in bloom.

All the usual amenities one would expect from a five-star, five-suite hotel are available.  If you have any questions, please write to us at labelleesplanadebb@gmail.com.  We'll be happy to answer any question.  That is what we're here for.  Tailored recommendations are our reason for being.  We are New Orleans goodwill ambassadors.

You can stay in a bland hotel room on an unnamed floor, Room 128, 239, whatever, or you can stay in a quirky colorful suite with room to move around and things to study: fine art, fine antiques, and that certain je ne c'est quoi that makes New Orleans such a special place where good memories are made.

La Belle Esplanade has been ranked the #1 inn in New Orleans since April 2014, according to TripAdvisor, and the #2 inn in the U.S., AND #16 in the world.  639 5-star reviews as of this writing, 12 4-star reviews, 651 reviews total. 

That's not bad for a small artisanal hotel with only five suites.  Personalized service and recommendations are the bedrock of our reputation.

The ceilings are twelve-and-a-half feet tall.

When you visit New Orleans, you should get off the usual tourist radar.  Good memories are made in New Orleans.  The best memories are made on Esplanade Avenue.  You belong at La Belle Esplanade.  Check our website, see what we offer.  Price is what you pay; value is what you get.  You pick a lot worse places as the headquarters for your New Orleans adventures.  Believe me.  I live here.  I know.

Here is a video of your humble narrator talking about some very granular New Orleans culture in Le Pelican Suite's sitting room:

Have a great New Orleans day today, wherever you may find yourself.  When you're ready to visit this wonderful city we call home remember five words: La Belle Esplanade dot com.  

Creole Syria and Other Mistaken Mysteries

Macaroons!

Someone recently wrote to me about Creole Syria and he sent me a link about what he was talking about.  It turns out he was confused.   Things currently or anciently in the Middle East are not my forté.  I specialize in Louisiana Creole, which means things that have happened and do happen in New Orleans.

Creole people live in the city of New Orleans and in the surrounding Louisiana civil parishes.  Creoles are people who are descended from people who came before them who lived out their Louisiana lives during the time the royal French or the royal Spanish or the imperial French governments had jurisdiction in our out-of-the way part of the world around the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River.  

What about the Cajuns?  Cajuns are descended from French Canadian settlers who relocated in Louisiana and they are different from Creoles.  The easiest way to put it is that Creoles live in the city and Cajuns live out in the swamp.  As far as I know, and I'm no expert, there is neither a Creole nor Cajun settlement in Syria, though I may be proven wrong as current events shake out in that region.

If there were a Cajun outpost in Russia, Vladimir Putin would be eating chicken gumbo while shirtless.  I guarantee he would.


Now you know what a Cajun sounds like.

If you can't understand Justin Wilson, you aren't alone.  Frau Schmitt can't figure out a thing he's saying.  He was the King of Cajun Comedy as well as a chef on public television.  My father used to love to watch his cooking show, but my father loved just about anything that reminded him of New Orleans.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Macaroons!!

"Macaroon" is a fun word to say, isn't it?  We get our macaroons at Sucre on Magazine Street.  We don't have them all the time, so don't expect them.  We have them when we have them, which means that we have them when one of us visits the cigar store across the street.  I'll leave it up to your imagine who that one of us might be: could it be Your Humble Narrator or might it be Frau Schmitt?  

Some people write us to ask if there are jaguars in New Orleans?  A:  Not recently.  The last sighting of a jaguar in southern Louisiana was in June of 1886 in Donaldsonville, which is about an hour's drive away. 

There was a recent sighting of a black panther in southern Louisiana in Iberia Parish.  Anything is possible in Cajun Country no matter how improbable it might seem.


Does that mean there may be black panthers in New Orleans?  It ain't necessarily so.  Certainly not the way you mean.  There are plenty of feral cats in our neighborhood, though.  They aren't around our house, but there are some blocks that are overrun with feral cats.  They help to keep the feral chicken population down.  We have feral chickens in our neighborhood, too.

The sitting room in our Les Pêches Suite

This may come as a surprise to our regular readers, but I'm not the biggest "Weird Al" Yankovic fan.  I can hear a lot of you saying, "You could knock me over with a feather," but, truly, if Weird Al releases a multimedia song parody, odds are I have no idea of what his source material might be.  That said, I got a critique from a Weird Al fan recently.  He sent me a link to a video.



"Dear Mr. King," our correspondent began, which was a very polite and proper way for him to start his correspondence.  I always enjoy being called Mr. King, as the people at the bank where I do my banking (where else would I do it?) well know.  It is one your humble narrator's names, after all.  Wanna know another one?  Another one is, Cutie-Scootie.  You can call me Matthew, which is my first name and it's the name that most people use.  (If you are reading this at the bank, you can keep calling me Mr. King.)

Our correspondent continued, "You may not realize it but your grammar is sometimes less-than-perfect.  You use Oxford commas capriciously and you sometimes omit or include possessive apostrophes without rhyme or reason.  While I am sure your sentence structure, which is usually immaculate and readable, is intended to reflect the way by which you intend to be heard in your readers' heads, your dangling participles leave much to be desired.  Your use of colloquialisms and gerunds sometimes muddies your message."  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera....and so on.  The letter went on and on until I nodded off and dreamed I was in New Orleans.  Then I woke up and my dream had come true.

Thanks, Buster.  I'll take your critique under advisement.  Remember, though, I'm living in New Orleans and I've picked up the local lingo and en-FLEX-zee-ohn.  If you want to know what it's like to live in this magical city, you'll stay at La Belle Esplanade.  Mispronounce everything and everyone will know what you're talking about.  Living la vida local is what it's all about in our part of New Orleans.  It's nothing like this:


You won't find (m)any shopping malls in New Orleans.  You have to go to the suburbs for that.  When a brass band plays in New Orleans, people dance like nobody is watching.  If I commit any word crimes, please remember, I live in New Orleans, a Creole city.   I'm not a native.  I'm a convert.  There are worse crimes of mistaken identity that a person can commit.

We hope to meet you soon.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Les Pêches Suite

Bedroom in Les Pêches Suite

I haven't mentioned it, but we've made some changes to Les Saintes Suite---so many changes that it's got a new name.  It's now called Les Pêches.  That's French for fish.  It's pretty fishy in there now.  If you're patient, maybe you'll find Nemo.

We didn't repaint the bedroom.  I've always been partial to the orange in that room and I think it makes a nice contrast with the sitting room's new color.  Wanna know what color that is?  You can either be patient or look through the door in the picture above.

Another bedroom view, Les Pêches Suite

I don't appear in the mirrors on that wardrobe because I'm standing right in the middle, where the doors meet.  I'm not a vampire.  Here's the proof:

Your humble narrator

We've put a new bed in Les Pêches Suite.  The old antique bed (all antiques are old by definition), we moved into La France Suite.  The new bed in Les Pêches is a queen bed.  We get a lot of requests for a queen bed.  The antique plantation sized beds we have in La France and Le Pelican are beautiful, but some people don't like to sleep close to each other.  In my line of work, I don't ask too many questions.

Bed in Les Pêches Suite

You'd think I could straighten out that picture over the bed before I took the picture, eh?  Just before writing this, I hung a new painting under the marlin.  I didn't hang the picture to cover up the spot you see in this photo.  That circle is a water spot on my camera lens.  I noticed it and wiped the lens with my shirt tail, just the way the pros do.  The new painting is a beauty.  It's by our favorite artist, Whalehead King.  You'll have to make a reservation to see it.

So, all of this is pretty mundane.  What about the sitting room?  Fasten your seatbelts, folks:

Sitting room, Les Pêches Suite

Sitting room, Les Pêches Suite

Sitting room, Les Pêches Suite

We've hung paper lanterns from the ceiling.  Yes, the ceilings are green in this suite.  I'm fancying the idea of making the decor more three dimensional and immersive, the way we did in Les Fleurs earlier this month (go back a couple of posts).  It works really well in Les Pêches.  When you turn the ceiling fan on, the lanterns spin.  I hope they stay up.

Sitting room, Les Pêches Suite

Of course, there are fish all over the walls in the sitting room, even more so than in the bedroom.  I'm very pleased with the results.  So is Frau Schmitt, who is usually right about these things.  This article gives you the slightest hint of what the suite looks like.  It doesn't smell like fish, of course.  We keep everything German-tidy; it smells like April freshness, the same as the rest of our inn.

You know what Ben Franklin said.  If you don't, he said that guests and fish stink after three days.  We don't think that about our guests.  We like people who stay for four, five, seven nights.  They really get a better idea of what it is like to live in New Orleans that way.  We know you have lives to get back to at home, but you won't regret staying for a longer time rather than a shorter.  Nobody is bored in New Orleans.

I should point out that Les Pêches Suite has it's own private bath with an antique clawfoot tub equipped with a shower head.  It has a balcony of its own that overlooks Esplanade Avenue.  The cast iron railing around the balcony is strung with white fairy lights you can plug in if you choose.  It's very romantic.

Les Saintes suite was always a favorite suite of mine, now that it's Les Pêches, it remains a favorite.  With only five to choose from, though, they are really all my favorite.  We are very proud of what we've created here at La Belle Esplanade.  I think justly so.  Frau Schmitt agrees, and she is usually right about these things.

If you are thinking of visiting New Orleans, you can do worse than staying with us.  We aren't the least expensive, but we try to provide good value for the dollar.  We're all about lagniappe and what hotel can you stay in and jawbone with the owner for an hour every morning?  None.  

If you want to see what the suite looked like before the renovations, here's the link to that.  

We look forward to meeting you.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Some updates to Les Fleurs Suite

The sitting room in Les Fleurs

I take pictures with my phone so they aren't usually very good.  They're good enough so that you get an idea of what the inn looks like, but it looks much better in person.  I happen to like this strategy, though a lot of professionals tell me I should have better pictures on our website.  I'm starting to think they're right.

One thing I don't like about my phone pictures is that it's very hard to get the color right.  The house is so saturated with color that it tends to dominate, or it just doesn't come out the way it really looks.  That's one argument to get somebody in here with a good camera.

Our opening photo is what the sitting room in Les Fleurs Suite looked like when we opened for business.  That antique couch hasn't been there for awhile.  Also, I've been making some additions to the décor this month, particularly to Les Fleurs Suite, but more extensively to Les Saintes.  Let's just discuss Les Fleurs today.

We like to name everything in the house in French.  Why?  Because visitors think that people in New Orleans still speak French.  Surprise!  Nobody speaks French here any more, but we can pretend, can't we?

Sitting room in Les Fleurs

I'm sure a professional can frame these shots better than I can.  I took this sitting in the leather arm chair in the opposite corner.  I'm trying to remember as I write this, are the walls pink or purple in that room---it's a combination of the two.  The ceiling is blue.  I know that much.

The original theme of Les Fleurs Suite was, if you don't speak French, flowers.  It still is, but we've added a bit more Mardi Gras to the mix.  We've hung some branches from the ceiling and festooned them with Mardi Gras beads.

One view

 

Another closeup

You see what I mean about the colors in these photos?  The walls aren't peach.  I know that because the bedroom is peach, or coral if you prefer.  

Anyhow, it's a very interesting suite and a very interesting experience.  I'm rather pleased with the effect.  Frau Schmitt isn't entirely convinced, and she is usually right about these things.  We're going to let things be for awhile and see what our guests have to say about it.  The first ones will check in this afternoon.

We have a few days when the inn will be empty (so far) in September.  I'm going to have a professional photographer come over and see what she can do.

We hired a professional photographer once, before we opened, and we couldn't use any of the pictures he took.  His pictures were all details, like this:

A detail shot

He was very proud of that picture.  It's an apple snail shell that's part of the driftwood sculpture in our dining room and it caught his eye.  Jiminy Cricket, man!  I want people to know what our inn looks like!  Leave those artsy compositions at the door!  He and I didn't get along so I started taking pictures with my phone.  That's how it began.  That's why all our online photos lack imagination---I don't have any.

I suppose the best way to see what we're up to is to make a reservation with us if you're thinking of visiting New Orleans.  We'll be happy to meet you.

In the very near future, don't hold your breath, I'll be giving you a glimpse of our newest addition.  Les Saintes Suite is no more.  It's been totally renovated.  It's now called Les Pêches.  If you don't speak French, that means fish.  It's gonna be a real ringer dinger!!

Until then,
À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast. 

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.

A New Orleans Quickie

St. Joan of Arc in the French Market, New Orleans

I know it's hard to tell most days, but it does take me a significant chunk of time to put together these fascinating articles for your enjoyment.  Today, pressed for time, I am going to be uncharacteristically brief.  You see, we are going to the Professional Innkeepers Association of New Orleans (PIANO) social mixer at Auld Sweet Olive B&B, one of our favorite B&Bs in the city.  Check out their website.  

People ask, with +/- 140 B&Bs in New Orleans, if there is a lot of competition between innkeepers in the city.  I have to admit that the answer is, not really.  If there is any competition, it's only of the most friendliest kind.  [I know I just used a double positive.]

I think part of this is because among the kind of people who choose to stay in a B&B over a hotel, it's because they find that a boutique catered experience is the more better option. [See what I just did there?]

The number of B&B rooms available at any given time is dwarfed by the number of hotel rooms available.  Really, for some people, the hotel is the better option.  I'm not trying to be a snob when I say this, but some people prefer familiarity over adventure.  

I'n not trying to say that it's an adrenaline-tingling adventure to stay in a small boutique New Orleans B&B the way it is to rappel down a cliff.  I'm saying that when you stay at a B&B, it's not off the rack.  Being an innkeeper is the ultimate small scale business.  After all, innkeepers open their homes and their lives to their guests.  Sometimes, when I lead guests through our lobby, I like to say, "Welcome to our world."  Nobody working in a hotel ever said that, at least not in a good way.  

In a hotel, it's more like, "The manager is out to lunch right now and there's no one with the authority to solve your problem.  I know what to do, but I'm not allowed without prior approval.  I've only been here for two months and I'm still on probation and I don't want to lose this job.  Welcome to my world."  

That paragraph needs a smiling emoji at the end but I don't have any at hand.  You know what I mean. 

Bedroom in our Clio Suite

We take great care to decorate every room in each of our five, two-room suites with care and attention to detail, to make it seem homey, if your home is a dream come true.  The bedroom in the Clio Suite doesn't even look like the picture above.  The bed has a canopy now, and flowers, and fairy lights.  All of La Belle Esplanade is a constant work in progress as we try to make it better and more interesting for our guests.  

So far, we seem to be doing a good job.  For the last 15 months, we've been ranked the #1 B&B in New Orleans on Trip Advisor by our guests.  15 months.  That's longer than we ever imagined when we opened the doors in September 2012.  It's gratifying to learn we are doing something right.

Sitting room in our Clio Suite

People ask if I always wear a hat.  No, not always, not when I'm singing in the shower.  Whenever you see me, I'll bet you a dollar that I'll be wearing a hat, though.  I like hats.

Fall innkeeper uniform

I'll be wearing a hat tonight when Frau Schmitt and I hobnob with our fellow innkeepers.  They're a boisterous lot, full of joie de vivre and plump with facts about this city we call home.  You can stay in a hotel anywhere, and much of the time you don't have any choice. In New Orleans, you can stay in a licensed bed and breakfast.  Think it over.  Make your reservations early.  We tend to fill up long before the big chain hotels on Canal Street do.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Les Saintes Suite (Update)

La Belle Esplanade, New Orleans

That's a picture from this past winter.  That's probably when I started this project of rewriting our suites' descriptions to match the changes we've made since we opened.  I've put buttons for each suite at the top of the blog, in case you want to read them all.  I'm not one to procrastinate, but it's time to put this chore behind me.  Today, I'm going to tell you what Les Saintes Suite is like.

Bedroom from the balcony, Les Saintes Suite

Nothing much has changed.  Some things have, of course, but not too much.  It's always been nice in there.   The orange walls aren't as acidic as this photo will lead you to believe, but it's still pretty potent.  If you ask your humble narrator, he'll tell you this suite is one of his favorites.  Tammy the housekeeper says that, too.

Tammie the Housekeeper

It's charming when a B&B has themed suites.  Les Saintes Suite sounds much better than Room 3C.  You think it's about the New Orleans Saints, right?  The football team?  It's not.  It has plaster statues of saints on the mantles and original artwork by a local artist that incorporates devotional medals.  There is a laminated front page of the Times-Picayune from when the Saints won the Superbowl.  

The bed is an antique plantation-size bed.  Remember what that means?  It's innkeeper speak for a full bed.  It's made to sleep two people, but it's a bit smaller than a queen.  We don't have any king-sized beds and we don't think we need them.  When you have beautiful antique beds like this, nobody minds.

Sitting room view of the bedroom, Les Saintes Suite

Les Saintes is made up of two large rooms on the second floor of the front of the house.  There is a private bath with a claw foot tub. The tub is equipped with a shower head for people who don't like to take baths.  Most people take showers, at least when they stay with us.  The sink is in the bedroom.  I'm not going to tell you that's the Creole way of doing things, but I will say it's more European that way.  

There is a red velveteen upholstered chair in the bedroom and another in the sitting room.  There's also an antique couch in the sitting room.  There are antiques in each room, but the most interesting is the antique radio in the bedroom that still works.  It works better than any new radio and it's all analog and vacuum tubes.  It's a Philco.

There's a small refrigerator stocked with beer, wine, juice, and whatnot.  In summer there's on of Loretta's pralines in there.  In winter, too.  There's a coffee maker and a teakettle.  In case you're wondering if there's a hair dryer, there's a hair dryer.  There's also an ironing board with an iron.  There are other things too.  If you think you might need something extra, please let us know, preferably via email.  We'll be happy to discuss it.

View from the front door, Les Saintes Suite

The walls in the sitting room is more yellow orange, while the walls in the bed room are more red orange.  The ceiling in each is lime green.  

There's a private balcony that has a panoramic view of Esplanade Avenue through the hundred-year-old live oak trees outside of our house.  The trees belong to the city.  They are protected landmarks in the Treme/Lafitte neighborhood and in the Esplanade Ridge Historic District.  I'm afraid that's why we'll never have another street car line on Esplanade Avenue.  The trees make the street too beautiful so nobody wants to cut them down to make way for a street car line.   Some people say just as well; streetcars are noisy.

We live in a city on a main street, but ours is a quiet neighborhood.

Riverside wall of the sitting room,  Les Saintes Suite

Did I mention there's a stuffed marlin?

Though I didn't take a picture of it, there is also a large desk and writing bench in this room.  The set up is a reproduction of my own private desk that most guests don't see.  It's nothing like Willie Wonka.  Instead, it's a desk that allows for plenty of spreading out if you want to check email, research restaurants on Yelp before asking us what we think, lay out notebooks and textbooks while writing a sermon, a memoir, a thesis, or just tomorrow's itinerary.  It's big enough for a map.  Everyone who stays in this suite comments on how great a desk it is.  I can't tell you where I got it because a friend made me promise I wouldn't.

I didn't take a picture of Les Saintes Suite's balcony, either.  I do have a picture of the staircase that leads up Les Saintes and to Le Pelican Suites:

Steep staircase, La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast

Both of the inn's staircases look alike except that one of them has a Louisiana flag hanging next to it.  Some people look at it and say, "Pelican for Pelican."  That's not the reason we put it there, though.  The stairs also go to Les Saintes, and there's nothing pelican-y in the front of the house.

Tammy the Housekeeper says she's worked at a lot of places before she chose to help us out.  "I've never been in a place as nice as this," Tammie the Housekeeper told me.  "Every one of the suites is like a work of art.  Nobody has a favorite because every one of our suites is great."  I looked to Frau Schmitt and she nodded in agreement to confirm that Tammie the Housekeeper was being sincere.  She's usually right about these things.

Please see our website: labelleesplanade.com to learn more about our inn, our policies (the link to which is at the bottom of every one of our website's page), and to make a reservation.  The online calendar we maintain on our website reflects all our suites available in real time.  Go straight to the source.  We're about a 15 minute walk from the French Quarter.  Our street is only the 2nd-most beautiful street in New Orleans, the most beautiful being St. Charles Ave.  What about Bourbon Street?  It depends on what end you want to be on.

We look forward to meeting you.  I took all the pictures with my phone.

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Clio, Goddess of Peace, Genius of History

Statue of Clio in September

The last time I wrote an update of our description of our Clio Suite, the only pictures I had of the new bed were from when the bed wasn't even all put together yet.  The bed has been complete for awhile now, so I decided to provide an update of the bed pictures.  I know it's not that exciting, but it needs to be done.  

We put the canopy posts up.  Here's one view from the bathroom.  I may as well show it here.  If you reserve this suite, you're going to see it all for yourself.

Bed in Clio Suite, La Belle Esplanade, New Orleans, LA

You probably don't care about our overhead expenses, but this bed cost a lot of money.  It's a queen.  I know it's expensive because Frau Schmitt and I were balancing the books the other day and I asked what this big expense was.  She showed me the receipt and I stopped squawking.  Frau Schmitt said, "It's for the guests."  I couldn't argue with that.  She's usually right about these things.  If it's for the guests, every expense if justified.

The bed in Clio Suite from the other side, in gauzy light

There are silk flowers and Christmas lights strung over the headboard.  I know.  It makes you think of a honeymoon suite in the Poconos, but it's not.  It's such a beautiful suite.  There's no ticky-tacky.  We're adding new original artwork in this suite.  The whole inn is a work in progress.  If you come back next year, you won't want things to be the same.  You'll want them to be better.   Us, too.

Let's have one more parting shot, this time of the bed from the sitting room:

You get the idea

Twelve and a half foot ceilings make all the difference.  That, and the rooms that are bigger than the average apartment in other world-class cities.  You can do cartwheels in here if you choose to. 

I took these pictures with my phone in the morning, when the sun was coming through the front windows, through the trees.  That's why the walls look more pink this time.  They're really more plummy. 

We look forward to meeting you.

The ceilings are still purple.

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Les Fleurs Suite (updated)

Antique bed, Les Fleurs Suite

I forget whose idea it was to name everything in French.  When we're talking amongst ourselves, we always call it Flower.  "Remember those nice people who stayed in Flower?" Frau Schmitt will ask me, and I know exactly who she means.  

Our guests who get into the spirit of things call this Les Fleurs Suite, and they should.   That's what it says on our website.  It's this suite and it's one of our favorites.  The sitting room is pink and the bedroom is peach.  I forget whose idea it was to pick those colors but, with the blue ceiling and the all the antique furniture, it has a calming effect.  It's on the ground floor, which makes it Tammie the Housekeeper's favorite suite.

View from the front porch

As usual, I took all these pictures with my phone.  Les Fleurs Suite has its own private front porch that faces Esplanade Avenue.  You get to the porch through the front bedroom window that goes down to floor and up into the ceiling.  The bed frame used to be full-sized.  It used to be in Clio , but we got a new bed for up there.  We took this bed to the restorers and they turned it into a queen.  Les Fleurs Suite has a queen-sized bed - no need to call about that.   The only other suite with a queen bed is Clio.

Sitting room, Les Fleurs Suite

We added a new leather love seat to go with the velvet chair in the sitting room.  The sitting room also has the leather chair that matches the love seat.  You can't see it in this picture because I was sitting in it.  Even with the antique wardrobe and dresser, there's plenty of room in this first room of the suite.  

As for the second room, the bedroom, it has plenty of space in it, too, even with the antique queen bed and the other antique furnishings.  We already saw a picture of the bed, here's what it looks like to look from the bedroom through the sitting room:

Bedroom view of the sitting room

You'd think I took these pictures at different times of day on different days, but the light is beguiling in our house, especially when you use your phone to take the pictures.  There is a private bathroom off the bedroom, equipped with an antique claw foot tub in case you want to take a soak.  The tub is equipped with a shower head - no need to call about that.  The hand sink, however, is in the bedroom because it's more European that way.

The reason this is called Les Fleurs Suite is because of the botanical artwork on the walls.  Some are photographic prints.  There is a paper mache flower from a Mardi Gras float.  Over the mantle in the sitting room, there are some original oil paintings by a local artist we like to collect.  

Two private rooms, a private bath, and a private porch that looks out over Esplanade Avenue.  The wild ginger in front of the porch is coming back after almost dying from cold last winter.  Esplanade Avenue is a beautiful street and the front porch presents an interesting and ever-changing view.  

It's a main street, but it isn't terribly busy for a main city street.  Cars go by and people walk by, too.  The tour buses and bicycle tours stop across the street to snap pictures of the house.  We live in a kind of landmark: most colorful house on Esplanade Avenue.

The best way to make a reservation is online through our website: labelleesplanade.com.  There's no need to call unless you have questions.  In that case, we'll be happy to answer them.  We're not always home though, so email is generally more efficient.  

I'm not trying to discourage you from calling, it's just that we put everything up on our website.  We don't think anybody likes surprises.  When somebody calls, they have to wait for me to pull up our website to check availability or to check our policies.  

Tammie the Housekeeper

Tammie the Housekeeper is a whiz with the cleaning, but she prefers not to have anything to do with computers.  That's why she never answers the phone.  The answering machine can take a message as well as she can.  She's usually busy getting the suites ready, stocking the complimentary refrigerator, making sure ever suite has coffee, tea, a bag of Zapp's potato chips, and putting a praline on the pillow.  We wouldn't be as successful as we are without good housekeeping.

We look forward to meeting you.

A votre santé,

La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.

Clio Suite (Update)

The first Captain America Movie

What we're really here to talk about today is the Clio Suite, the suite that has recently taken on "most romantic" status.  It used to be that we called Les Fleurs Suite the honeymoon suite, but we swapped the beds around and, now, I think Clio is more romantic.  

This isn't a recent picture of the bed

A canopy makes all the difference, not that you can tell from a picture from before we put the canopy up.  The plum pink and turquoise rooms are each complimented with a purple ceiling.  I know what you're thinking: What were they thinking?  It works because these are oversized rooms and the ceilings are twelve-and-a-half feet high.  

The Clio Suite is on the second floor, atop a steep winding staircase.  The suite is made up of two spacious rooms, one for sitting and one for bed.  There is also a private bathroom with an antique claw foot tub equipped with a shower.  The whole inn is air-conditioned in summer and heated in winter.  The bed is a new mahogany queen bed.    

Clio Suite has a private balcony that overlooks Esplanade Avenue.  Here is the view:

View from the Clio Suite

There is an antique mirrored armoire in the bedroom, as well as an antique marble-topped dressing table.  The sink is in the bedroom as well, European-style.  It's all very cheerfully elegant.  We just commissioned a painting from a local artist to hang over the mirror over the sink.  It's title?  You are my sunshine.  That's also the title of Louisiana's state song.


We can listen as we go along.

Here are three pictures of the sitting room:

Clio Suite sitting room, hallway door closed

The Clio Suite sitting from the hallway

Clio Suite sitting room, looking lakeside.

The sitting room has a very comfortably upholstered leather love seat, armchair and ottoman.  The whole suite is inspired by the statue in the triangular park across the street from us, Gayarre Place.  The statue in the park is named Clio, after the Muse of History and Genius of Peace.

Rates include complimentary wi-fi, a refrigerator stocked with complimentary beverages at check-in, a coffee maker, a tea kettle, hair dryer, iron, ironing board, and all the same amenities as our other suites in case I left something out.  Rates also include breakfast.  We put out a delicious spread every morning.  

Did I mention the ceilings are purple?

The fleurs-de-lis is one symbol of New Orleans

The best way to check our availability and to make reservations is through our website: labelleesplanade.com. We offer some rooms you can't find anywhere else.

UPDATE OF THE UPDATE: I finally took pictures of the bed now that's it's put together.  You can see those pictures by clicking on this sentence.  

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.