New Orleans tourist information
New Orleans has been called a great many things in tribute to its distinctive culture: The Paris of the Americas, America's International City, the Gateway to the Americas, The City that Care Forgot, The Crescent City, and by natives, simply The Big Easy.
Napoleon called it "Isle d'Orleans," the only independent island state in America. Its attitude and language were rooted in French, spiced by the Spanish, influenced greatly by African-Americans (many of them free people of color) and embellished by large immigrant waves of Irish, Germans and Italians. Thus, despite frequent misrepresentations by movie-makers, the local people do not speak with Southern accents. They speak a fairly representative English, with the exception of certain waterfront neighborhoods where something that sounds very much Brooklynese can be heard. Because of the rich ethnic mix, certain local peculiarities of speech, and idioms, are important.
These days the lower-case adjective "creole" describes virtually anything indigenous to this region, be it a tomato or a house. As a noun with a capital "C", a Creole is a person, and therein hangs a tale. By some definitions, virtually everyone in New Orleans seems to be a Creole. By others, there's hardly anyone who measures up. Strictly speaking, a New Orleans Creole is a descendant of an early French or Spanish settler, "born in the colony," not in Europe. According to most dictionaries, Creole comes from the same Latin root as the word "create," with the French creating their "Creole" from the Spanish "criollo." Over time, this went from denoting a person born of Spanish parents overseas to a person born similarly of French parents. A child of the colonies, in either case. Yet Creole can also mean a mix of African-American and white parentage, or even undiluted African-American. The Cajuns of South Louisiana are descendants of French colonists who, more than 350 years ago, settled in what are now the Canadian maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They called their home in the New World "l'Acadie" and they were known as Acadiens. "Cajun" is a corruption of the anglicized word, Acadian. The British, who took possession of that territory in the 18th century, expelled the Acadians. Thousands of the Cajuns eventually settled in South Louisiana.
New Orleanians are particularly cantankerous when it comes to pronunciations of local streets. The city was founded by French settlers who christened the streets in the French Quarter, so you'd think Gallic names would roll right off our tongues. But you would be wrong. Chartres is said like the English word "charters;" Conti is pronounced "con-tie" and the "gun" in Burgundy is stressed. Many an Orleanian refers to "Eye-berville" Street, and you already know about Orleans Street. Carondelet is a Spanish word, stressed on the second and fourth syllables, and the latter is pronounced just like "let."
Having played havoc with our very heritage, you can imagine what we do with street names that are Greek to us. Clio is "Clie-o;" Melpomene is "Mel-po-meen;" Calliope is "Cal-y-ope;" and we dance around poor Terpsichore to the tune of "Turp-see-core."
And while we're on the subject of streets, a sidewalk here is called a banquette. That's the French word for bench, and of course we mangle it to "ban-ket." In the early days, sidewalks were made of wood with a slightly raised bench-like edge on the street side that helped protect the ladies' skirts from the mud and mire.
The French Quarter is also called the Vieux Carre' ("view ka-ray"), which means "old square." Matter of fact, if you look for a "French Quarter" exit off the Interstate you'll be out of luck -- it's the "Vieux Carre'" exit!
If you happen to hail from Brooklyn, New York, you'll likely feel right at home in New Orleans. Many Crescent City residents speak a soft, Southernesque version of the fabled "dese, dem, and dose" lingo usually associated with that northern port city. The word "port" is operative: New York and New Orleans are cities with ports (and quite colorful pasts), and immigrants from the Old Country populated each. A many-splendored blending of nationalities created the similar sounds. New Orleans, incidentally, is not a typical Dixie city, and you'll rarely hear the stereotypical Southern accent here.
The term "neutral ground," which to all Orleanians means the median in a road, dates back to the early days when the wide strip of land that's now Canal Street served as the neutral ground dividing the French Quarter and the American Sector.
You have no doubt heard of the phenomenon known as Mardi Gras. And why shouldn't you? After all, it's the biggest bash in all of North America. Carnival season begins annually on Twelfth Night -- January 6th. Literally speaking, en Francais, Mardi Gras is Fat Tuesday. Fat Tuesday is the last day of Carnival; the night before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. But the term "Mardi Gras" also designates the last two weeks of Carnival, where partying gets "serious" and parades roll every day throughout the city. Carnival krewes are the private clubs that stage the elaborate parades and Carnival balls. The most famous of the 55 or so parading is Rex, the King of Carnival. The krewe members, garbed in eye-popping costumes, cruise through the streets on fantastic floats. The masked floatriders, called masquers, toss souvenirs to the crowds that line the parade routes and shriek, "Throw me something, mister!" The souvenirs, which are called throws, include cups, miniature footballs, bikinis, tiny stuffed animals, and all sorts of things. The Zulu parade, which precedes Rex on Mardi Gras morning, is famous for throwing coconuts. New throws crop up each year. Far and away the most ubiquitous of the throws are beads and doubloons. The beads are of colored plastic, and the doubloons are aluminum coins that bear a krewe's emblem and motto. Judging by the enthusiasm of the crowd, you'd think the throws were akin to the treasures of King Tut. But a wild scramble to catch a cheap trinket is just part of the madness called Mardi Gras.
New Orleans is known the wide world over for its exotic cuisine. Not surprisingly, a number of linguistic idiosyncracies crop up on local menus. To wit: andouille (ahn-doo-ee) and boudin (boo-dan) are both spicy Cajun sausages. A beignet (bin-yay) is a delicious square doughnut liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar, but the word is also used for fried tidbits of fish served as an appetizer. Chicory (chik-o-ree) is an herb, the roots of which are dried, ground, roasted, and used to flavor the potent coffee we favor. Cafe' au lait is half hot milk and half chicory coffee, delicious with sweet, sugary beignets. Crawfish - enormously popular in these parts -is a tiny critter that resembles a miniature lobster. Locals often called them "mudbugs" because they live in the mud of freshwater streams. Crawfish and shrimp turn up in a wide variety of local dishes, including the ubiquitous etouffee. In French, etouffee (ay-too-fay) means "smothered"; in these parts it means a succulent, tomato-based sauce in which crawfish and shrimp are, well, smothered. Jambalaya (jum-boh-lie-ya), a culinary cousin of Spanish paella, is a many-splendored dish involving rice, tomatoes, ham, shrimp, andouille, chicken, celery, onions and spices. You run across an array of gumbos here. Gumbo is a thick, robust soup with many variations (all of which include rice), such as chicken and andouille, okra gumbo, shrimp gumbo and file' (feelay) gumbo. (Incidentally, file' is ground sassafras.) A mirliton is a hard-shelled vegetable pear that's cooked like squash and stuffed with spicy ground beef, ham, or shrimp; and plantain, a member of the banana family, is a sweetish vegetable sidedish. Pain perdu (French for "lost bread") is French toast made with thick slices of French bread. Red beans and rice (a creamy mixture of kidney beans, rice, sausages and seasonings) is traditionally served on Mondays in South Louisiana, the reason being that after a weekend of rich brunches and dinners, locals like to start the week off with simple but hearty "stick-to-your-ribs" fare. If you're accustomed to Southern BBQ, a serving of New Orleans barbeque shrimp will take you by surprise; it isn't "barbecued" at all, but whole "peel-and-eat" shrimp simmered in a zingy garlic-butter sauce. Pralines (praw-leens), which can be found in souvenir, candy, and gift shops all over town, are sweet-sweet patties made with sugar, butter, and pecans; there are lots of variations, including a chocolaty concoction. Oysters - tons of which are consumed by New Orleanians - are the raison d'etre of Oysters Bienville and Oysters Rockefeller, both of which originated here. For the Bienville-style dish, oysters are baked in their shells in a creamy sauce flavored with shrimp, mushrooms, and sometimes garlic or mustard. Named for the fellow who sauce is made with pureed greens flavored with anise liqueur. Bananas Foster, an enormously popular dessert, involves bananas sauteed in butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then flamed with cognac and served over vanilla ice cream. The city's two sandwich extravaganzas are po-boys and muffulettas. The former (similar to submarines and heros) are served on thick slabs of French bread and include a dizzying variety of stuffings: roast beef and gravy, ham, fried oysters, fried shrimp, softshell crab and so on. Muffulettas are served on platter-sized seeded Italian loaves slathered with olive relish and heaped with Italian meats and cheeses. (Note that half a muffulletta is huge). Oh, and incidentally "dressed" here has nothing to do with attire: it means a sandwich served "with the works". Lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap) is a pleasant little something extra. A bonus. Say, 13 doughnuts for the price of a dozen. And last, but by no means least, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!" That's a Cajun phrase you'll hear often in this part of the world. It means, "Let the good times roll!" You bet, cher. You betcha!
New Orleans is widely recognized as one of the top cultural destinations in the United States. Many cultural aspects of New Orleans are explored here, including the French Quarter, New Orleans music, and other fabulous New Orleans entertainment opportunities. We'll also focus on New Orleans food, including cajun cooking, as well as crawfish and gumbo recipes from some of the best New Orleans restaurants. In addition, the history of New Orleans, including architecture, voodoo, the difference between Cajuns and Creoles are all explored here.
Cemetery is a Greek word meaning "to lie down." In early New Orleans, if you dug a six-foot hole you would soon have a hole with up to 5 feet 11 and 3/4 inches of water because of the city's high water table and below sea-level elevation. As a result, a coffin would float in the grave; it literally had to be immersed. In fact, a coffin placed in a freshly dug grave floated on top until men forced it to settle on the bottom with long wooden poles. To eliminate this agonizing sight, large holes were bored into the bottoms of coffins so water could enter quickly and force the coffin to sink without delay.
Imagine listening to the coffin of a loved one, gurgling, gurgling, gurgling, as it sank to its rest. This painful ordeal led to the practice of building tombs above ground. A visiting writer in the mid-1800s labeled these cemeteries "cities of the dead."
A humorist said, "Death is simply nature's way of telling us to slow down." And a very famous writer, upon visiting New Orleans, said, "You can tell a great deal about a community by the way they honor their dead, and without meeting any of the people of New Orleans yet, I can tell you I know I'm going to like them, for very few cities that I have visited throughout the world honor the dead as they do here in New Orleans."
New Orleans cemeteries have been the sites of a multitude of unusual happenings and no doubt a source of fascination for the visitors to our city. In 1980, a vice president of Neiman-Marcus of Houston, TX, chose Lafayette Cemetery on Washington Avenue as the site for his wedding. The date was Friday the 13th of June.
A chartered flight from Houston brought the bride, groom and guests, all dressed in black. Four black limousines took the wedding party to Lafayette Cemetery. The ceremony was held in one of the aisles of the cemetery, while a lone trumpet played "Summertime."
The bride and groom, both married previously, told the graveyard superintendent they had come to bury the past and get married at the same time.
There are 42 cemeteries in the metropolitan New Orleans area. Metairie Cemetery is the most beautiful as well as the most unique not only in New Orleans, but anywhere in the world. If you wish to see the architecture of the world, you need only visit Metairie Cemetery. There are hundreds of interesting stories; the following is just one example:
ST. LOUIS CEMETERY NUMBER 2 This cemetery was the fourth cemetery in New Orleans. It was laid out in two squares. Square Number 3 was set aside by the city principally for the burial of African-American Catholics. Such notable African-Americans as Marie Laveau, Oscar J. Dunn, members of the Sisters of the Holy Family, Arthur Esteves, Ernest "Dutch" Morial and many others are buried here. The iron ornaments and gates of the tombs were usually fashioned by African-American artisans, many of whom are also buried in the cemetery. Visits to this cemetery are conducted daily by the National Park Service. Call 589-2636.
New Orleans, with its richly mottled old buildings, its sly, sophisticated - sometimes almost disreputable - air, and its Hispanic-Gallic traditions, has more the flavor of an old European capital than an American city. Townhouses in the French Quarter, with their courtyards and carriageways, are thought by some scholars to be related on a small scale to certain Parisian "hotels" - princely urban residences of the 17th and 18th centuries. Visitors particularly remember the decorative cast-iron balconies that cover many of these townhouses like ornamental filigree cages.
European influence is also seen in the city's famous above-ground cemeteries. The practice of interring people in large, richly adorned above-ground tombs dates from the period when New Orleans was under Spanish rule. These hugely popular "cities of the dead" have been and continue to be an item of great interest to visitors. Mark Twain, noting that New Orleanians did not have conventional below-ground burials, quipped that "few of the living complain and none of the other."
The spine of Uptown, and much of New Orleans, is the city's grand residential rue, St. Charles Avenue, which was aptly described in the novel "A Confederacy of Dunces": "The ancient oaks of St. Charles Avenue arched over the avenue like a canopy... St. Charles Avenue must be the loveliest place in the world. From time to time... passed the slowly rocking streetcars that seemed to be leisurely moving toward no special destinations, following their route through the old mansions on either side... Everything looked so calm, so prosperous."
The streetcars in question, the St. Charles Line, represent the nation's only surviving historic streetcar system. All 35 electric cars were manufactured by the Brill & Perley Thomas Company between 1922 and 1924 and are still in use - truly a national treasure.
Creole cottages and shotgun houses dominate the scene in many New Orleans neighborhoods. Both have a murky ancestry. The Creole cottage, two rooms wide and two or more rooms deep under a generous pitched roof with a front overhang or gallery, is thought to have evolved from various European and Caribbean forms. The shotgun house is one room wide and two, three or four rooms deep under a continuous gable roof. As legend has it, the name was suggested by the fact that because the rooms and doors line up, one can fire a shotgun through the house without hitting anything. Some scholars have suggested that shotguns evolved from ancient African "long-houses," but no one really knows. It is true that shotguns represent a distinctively Southern house type. They are also found in the form of plantation quarters houses. Unlike shotgun houses in much of the South, which are fairly plain, New Orleans shotguns fairly bristle with Victorian jigsaw ornament, especially prominent, florid brackets. Indeed, in many ways New Orleans shotguns are as much a signature of the city as the French Quarter.
One of the truly amazing aspects of New Orleans architecture is the sheer number of historic homes and buildings per square mile. New Orleanians never seem to replace anything. Consider this, Uptown, the city's largest historic district, has almost 11,000 buildings, 82 percent of which were built before 1935 - truly a "time warp."
New Orleans' architectural character is unlike that of any other American city. A delight to both natives and visitors, it presents such a variety that even after many years of study, one can still find things unique and undiscovered.
The city's movable museum is the oldest continuously operating street railway system in existence. It's more than 150 years old, and the official Historic Landmark clangs, rumbles, and rolls along St. Charles Avenue, one of the prettiest thoroughfares in the country. The uptown route runs beneath huge arching oaks, past the handsome mansions of the Garden District, the lush campuses of Loyola and Tulane Universities, and the luxuriant lawns of Aububon Park (home of Audubon Zoo).
The original streetcar line was the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, which was founded in 1835 to connect New Orleans with the city of Carrollton (long ago incorporated into New Orleans). The 35 olive-green cars operating today are Perley Thomas Arch Roof-900 Series models, built in 1923-4 by the Perley A. Thomas Car Co. in High Point, North Carolina. Each car has a 52-passenger capacity.
"A Streetcar Named Desire", from which Blanche Dubois descended in the opening scene of Tennessee Williams' famous play, ran along Desire Street.
Once the city's only form of public transportation, the streetcar today is still serious transportation for many New Orleanians. A true bargain at $1.25 one-way, a sightseeing excursion from Canal Street to Carrollton and back is 13.13 miles, and takes about an hour and a half. A ride on the St. Charles Streetcar is a lovely introduction to the City of New Orleans.
You can also see the sights along the riverfront by riding the "Ladies in Red" streetcars. These "ladies" are seven vintage streetcars painted red with gold trim as an historical reference to the old French Market line which followed part of the same route. Some cars are Perley Thomas and some are Melbourne W2, accessible to the disabled. The fare is $1.25 one way. This 1.9 mile line, the first to open in the city since 1926, became operational in August of 1988. It conveniently connects the cultural and commercial developments along the revitalized riverfront. An ambitious $14 million expansion project is now underway involving two-directional tracks, additional shelters, a half-mile extension of the line, and a streetcar museum.
by New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau
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