I arrived in New Orleans on Saturday afternoon with the hope
of going to the Halloween parade downtown in the evening . After choosing a
campground several miles outside the city center rather than a closer in hostel
from which downtown would have been accessible by public transportation, I
decided to call it an early night in my tent instead of driving back into town
and trying to find parking. Halloween is probably one of my least favorite
holidays anyway!

Halloween was technically on Sunday, but I guess the parade
was held a day early to spread out the revelry and make the weekend night the
one of the biggest partying. The aftermath of the previous night’s carousing
was evident when I got into the Faubourg Marigny and French Quarter on Sunday
morning. The almost deserted heart of New Orleans was absolutely strewn with
rubbish along the lines of an Eastern European Gypsy camp or the streets of
Cairo. New Orleans is apparently a late night partying town and late morning
rising town, at least on weekends. The street cleaners and trash collectors don’t
even start working until mid-morning.

New Orleans is one of the last major tourist cities in
America I had not yet visited . It’s location in the Gulf Coast region has
always been significantly out of my way on my east-west trips across the
country, and the heat makes it a place I would not want to go in the summer
season. And then Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it didn’t seem like the
greatest place to go in the several years that followed. Five years later,
though, it’s a different story.

New Orleans is one of America’s biggest party towns and not
just for Mardi Gras. The relaxed laws about open alcohol in New Orleans make it
legal to consume beer or other booze while walking around in the French
Quarter, in contrast to the extreme restrictiveness about open alcohol in all
but a few other places in the country. But that probably contributes to the
morning the morning trash on the streets, much of which was made up of beer
cans and plastic drink cups.

I spent a full day in and around the French Quarter, which I
found to be very attractive architecturally and with numerous interesting
attractions to visit . Jackson Square and the buildings around it, including
Saint Louis Cathedral and the Presbytere and Cabildo which flank it on both
sides, is especially appealing, a sort of Frenchified subtropical paradise with
elegant architecture.

I spent much of the day browsing restaurant menus as well in
hope of finding a fairly priced authentic New Orleans lunch and dinner in a
town that’s supposed to have one of the best and most distinctive cuisines in
America. And I, of course, had to have some beignets and café au lait at Café du
Monde.

Being Halloween Sunday the French Quarter got very busy as
the day progressed with drunk people spilling out of the bars and onto Bourbon
Street well before evening. I will say this about New Orleans: It seems to
attract a pretty trashy crowd overall, but I guess that’s to be expected in a
place whose reputation is centered on partying. Most people aren’t there for
the historic sites or the cultural attractions but rather to indulge in good
and drink and lots of it and to get laid.

The French Quarter overall is super touristy, but
neighborhood immediately downriver from it, the Faubourg-Marigny has much of
the same elegant residential architecture without the commercialism and crowds.
I found it to be a very nice place to walk around and imagine a genteel life in
the city.

One of the touristy themes of New Orleans is voodoo, the mix
of African and Christian influenced religion that persisted among slaves in Haiti
and elsewhere in the New World that’s been popularized by Hollywood thrillers
and the zombie craze . There are numerous shops around the periphery of the
French Quarter which promote everything from authentic voodoo talismans and
potions to ceremonial experiences – to me quite silly. I did go the Saint Louis
#1 Cemetery in Treme at the edge of the French Quarter, one of the oldest and
most famous in New Orleans, to see the grave of its most famous resident, voodoo
priestess Marie Laveau. There’s something about southern Louisiana cemeteries
with their above ground tombs and crypts rather than underground burial that
feel quite creepy and lends itself to all kinds of horror movies involving
various versions of the living dead. Spooky!