New Orleans has a luxurious visit in store for any traveler, whether international jazz groupies, suburban fashionistas, families looking for a break from Disneyesque theme parks or the rural visitor in search of old city charm.
New Orleans has an abundance of Zen-like spas, champagne and chocolates at four star hotels and gustatory feasts at some of the world's most original and satisfying restaurants. New Orleans has it all: the funky, the retro, the southern, the edgy. . .basically, the cultural mix known to the globe's most international "it" cities.
The only question is how not to miss some hidden treasures while allowing the seductive slow pace of the city to take effect. The key: don't be a slave to the early return home. Stay a few extra days.
Most people do. More visitors to New Orleans stay extra days than most cities in America. In fact, a common theme among transplants to New Orleans is that they came here for Mardi Gras (substitute Jazz Fest, Halloween, Essence, or even just a Sugar Bowl game), and never went home.
So what to do with a few extra days in New Orleans? Try out these stress-free and luxurious strategies any local would recommend:
This is not lunch… this is a TGIF festival that welcomes long-standing tribes of the well coiffed, bejeweled and any visitor willing to don a jacket if you forgot one, supplied by this traditional, yet sophisticated Creole restaurant. Located in the 200 block of Bourbon Street, you can watch the street scene as people come and go, watch diners from walls covered in mirrors, lazily work your way from endless cocktails and appetizers, through the best trout almandine, pompano, soft shell crab or shrimp Clemenceau, capped by Café Brulot, a century old French concoction made with citrus fruits, liquor and dark roasted coffee. If you have friends in New Orleans, get their waiter's name to guarantee in-crowd treatment. Lunch should end as dinner begins: with a quieter, but no less charming collection of friends.
Of course, Fridays are not the only day to take a slow lunch, and Galatoire's is not the only restaurant that welcomes hilarity followed by sated lingering. This is lunch as you imagined European bohemians might have enjoyed it – right here in America, easily accessible by an average 2- to 3-hour direct flight from almost anywhere in the country.
Antoine's is the grand dame of New Orleans restaurant/clubs. Reserve the 1840 room for intimate elegance and cigars with your coffee; or the Rex room where carnival kings and queens dine, or just hang out in the crystalline front parlor and watch everyone come and go. There are almost no restaurants in America left that offer this 19th century style dining luxury. Enjoy it while it lasts. Prepare by reading Frances Parkinson Keyes' book "Dinner at Antoine's". Follow lunch by window shopping the beautiful antiques shops in the neighborhood.
It's a toss up: luxuriate between the sheets, check out the freshest regional foods in town, or be pampered at any one of a half dozen elegant urban spas?
Whether a cottage with a private garden in the quarter, or a river view room from a high rise, it is hard to find many American cities with more beautiful bedrooms than New Orleans. Many offer plantation antique teester beds in which you can imagine arising to dress in a hoop skirted dress with puffy sleeves. Others are right up to the edge of chic modernist retreats. Bed and breakfasts are scattered throughout the city's neighborhoods and historic districts.
But the streets of New Orleans will call you…to the farmers' market in the heart of the city's Warehouse/Arts district. There you can find bottles of Louisiana fig, strawberry or muscadine grape jams, spicy flavored vinegars and olive oils to take home, or a bag of satsumas for a quick bite of tart yet mellow citrus fruit unlike any you've had before. Old roses cut that morning in neighborhood gardens around the city will make a fragrant bedside bouquet. Here you can observe the shopping habits of natives looking for fresh raviolis, breads and pastries, or beautiful soft shell crabs still kicking in the bucket.
Just down the block Julia Street awaits with an awesome row of art galleries exhibiting the works of regional as well as national contemporary artists. Forget the six-figure works at auction in New York; here, art from decorative to challenging is affordable. What a wonderful way to support the arts, and liven up your living room at the same time.
Uh-oh. It’s lunch time again, and time to make another tough choice among surrounding restaurants run by some of the world's most deservedly famous chefs: Emeril Lagasse, right on Julia Street, and Susan Spicer, around the corner on St. Charles and Girod. There’s also new local favorite Tommy’s on Tchoupitoulas (say “chopatoolus”) and, one block down in the Renaissance Arts Hotel, the elegant Côte Brasserie. Or, for serious Italian fare, head up Tchoupitoulas to Restaurant 1179.
For a more casual bite, pick up a po-boy stuffed with dripping hot roast beef, blueberry pie, and Barq's root beer at Mother's on Poydras Street; or get a real “South of the border” flavor at Banditos Mexican restaurant in the Ambassador Hotel on Tchoupitoulas, just off Poydras.
If you made it out in the morning, and had another great New Orleans meal for lunch, its time to work it off a bit…or be worked on. Manolos or massage, which shall it be?
For the Manolo Blahniks and many more great choices in shoes, accessories, the latest evening or sportswear: The Shops at Canal Place, the New Orleans Center and the Riverwalk Marketplace are all walking-distance downtown shopping centers.
The French Quarter, despite the pervasive tee-shirt shops, is filled with wonderful specialty, jewelry, art and antique shops. Take your best friend along to help you choose your present, or to keep you from breaking the bank.
Shopping in New Orleans is not the grinding, crowd- and traffic-filled, get-it-first-or-get-nothing shopping of New York and other large cities. It is slow paced, comfortable and downright pleasurable. It is shopping as a leisure activity. Just try not to buy a beautiful garnet choker worn by some French beauty from the last century on Royal Street, or French china and crystal culinary masterworks on Chartres Street; one of a kind evening separates on Royal Street; and first-edition literary masterpieces on Pirates Alley (in a building that once housed William Faulkner).
What, still no massage? Move your dinner reservations until later. Catch a late afternoon respite… get your hair brushed out, your nails painted, your face smoothed out, or your muscles pinched and pulled at the Ritz-Carlton, Miss Celie's Spa, Loews, Body Contours or Aveda Paris Parker Salon (all downtown), or Belladonna, Beauty 101, Earthsavers, Mars, Pampered Soul or Body Joys Uptown.
Of course you could just stroll along the Mississippi River and be soothed by the balmy air and the distant melodies of a street saxophone player. What could be more luxurious in this fast-paced era than a stroll along Tom Sawyer's legendary river? Some coffee and beignets at Café Du Monde, just on the other side of the flood wall, can provide the lift needed to return to your room, dress and head out for night two of your music history lessons.
A Pimm's Cup, on the other hand, at the Napoleon House bar might send you on your way just as well.
Choices, choices: Shall it be a gospel brunch at the House of Blues… with wonderful Southern style food and music, or St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square for the real thing. The churches of New Orleans are as beautiful as the rest of the city's wonderfully eclectic architecture: less solemn and daunting than European churches, but richer and more textured than spare New England houses of worship. With some guidance, you might seek out one of the many storefront churches with gospel services.
Then, again, you can just go eat. Brunch, legend has it, was invented in New Orleans. The butchers and grocers at the open air food markets in the French Quarter had to close shop at the onset of mid-day heat.
They would retire to nearby restaurants for a late breakfast/early lunch. Brennan's and Tujaque's in the French Quarter were part of this history, but brunch New Orleans style is served all over the city. More often than not a jazz band will accompany your meal, softly improvising around traditional New Orleans tunes.
Eggs Benedict, Oysters Rockefeller, grillades and grits, and Bananas Foster… all integral to New Orleans brunch history, but now sharing menus with new creations by chefs steeped in the traditions of the south, New Orleans Creole recipes, culinary institutes and restaurants all over the world. Does it begin to sound as if you are eating your way through a weekend in New Orleans? Don't worry… be happy. You can always diet back home. And that is the one luxury for which any overweight native might envy you.
What could possibly be more luxurious than strolling through a park filled with about the same number of people that might have strolled there a hundred years ago? No roller blading accidents in City Park at the other end of Esplanade from the French Quarter. No lines for the water fountain either. No crowds around the park café. Beautiful pavilions designed by Frederick Olmstead's firm; graceful swans, ducks, and geese floating about glistening lakes and bayous, elegant art deco benches and chaise like concrete chairs. As you enter the park, the New Orleans Museum of Art offers a wonderful survey of 19th and 20th century paintings; decorative glass, silver and ceramic art, African and Asian art, and wonderful presentations of old New Orleans interiors. Don’t miss strolling through the magnificent new Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden – 5 ½ acres of beautifully landscaped grounds displaying more than 50 scupltures by a variety of famous artists.
Finally, just sit on the museum's steps and watch the Spanish moss sway on the huge branches of live oak trees. Are you sure you have to go home? Will you ever think of luxury in the same way again? Don't worry…stay another day! Or, "Y'all come back," as we say here.
Definitely make the time to explore Magazine Street, a six-mile stretch of trendy boutiques, charming antique stores, fine art galleries, chic specialty and gift shops, restaurants, cafes and more. The hip and the haute mix here among the historic street’s eclectic range of businesses and residences…plus another bountiful urban park built on the site of the 1884 world’s fair.
The Magazine Street bus will take you the length of the street (from Canal Street to River Road), or you can take the St. Charles Avenue streetcar and walk a few block over to Magazine. If you are planning on loading up lots of shopping bags, you might prefer to take a taxi. Or, you might also consider taking the “zoo cruise,” which boards near the Aquarium of the Americas, travels up the Mississippi, and lets you off at the Audubon Zoo in Audubon Park. Visit this top-five zoo, then shop your way back down Magazine Street. Visit www.magazinestreet.com for a listing of merchants and a map of the street.
If it's Tuesday, once a year, it's Mardi Gras, a not to be missed public celebration that brings everyone out into the streets to celebrate in a style more common to a time gone by. If it's not Mardi Gras, be assured there is plenty of partying to join somewhere in the city. Stay two more days… make it a week. Take a cruise on a steamboat up the river. Take a real cruise to the Caribbean; with a half dozen cruise lines now serving New Orleans, this is now one of the most popular home ports in America. Hit the casinos – maybe your luck in coming here will work on the roulette wheel too!
Ever noticed a group of travelers on a plane or airport somewhere in America who looked a little exhausted, but very relaxed…convivial, perhaps covered in some strange gaudy beads, humming a funny tune, hugging their significant other a little more than usual? Now you know where they were coming from. You're now a part of the same club. Your privileges will last a lifetime. And next time you book a room in a luxury hotel somewhere else in the world, you may just think about luxury New Orleans style. And you will come back and see us, again and again.
This material may be reproduced for editorial purposes of promoting New Orleans. Please attribute stories to New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. Fall 2004.
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