By HARRY MOUNT

Soul survivor: New Orleans still beats to its own rythmn


The Big Easy has had it pretty hard over the past five years. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina all but destroyed much of New Orleans. In 2008, its port — at the mouth of the Mississippi — was hit by the economic downturn, and last summer the BP oil spill halted its vital shrimping industry.

And yet . . . walk down Bourbon Street, the backbone of the 18th-century French Quarter and it’s like nothing has happened since these classical terrace houses, with their delicate wrought-iron balconies, were built more than 200 years ago.

On one corner of the street, a band is thumping out jazz and blues. On another, a little boy tap-dances in a pair of old brogues, with flattened Coke cans pinned to the soles.

In the Napoleon House, an endearingly shabby 1797 mansion on nearby Chartres Street, they are dishing up jambalaya — a Creole chicken, sausage and rice stew, with spicy Cajun shrimp gumbo.

The shrimping ban in the Gulf of Mexico was lifted in August — the French Quarter bounced back even earlier. Because the colonists wisely built the Quarter above sea level, it didn’t flood when Katrina struck, unlike 80 per cent of the city, which is below sea level and supposedly protected by a series of levees — earth and concrete banks.

When they broke under the pressure of Katrina’s storm swell, the disaster the city had half-expected for decades was wreaked.

Walk round the Quarter, though, and you’ll see little sign of the bad times — apart from this year’s most popular fancydress outfit: a pair of oil-spattered BP overalls.


Carnival time: Mardis Gras is as vibrant and loud as ever


Peak fancy-dress time is Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday (March 8 this year), a carnival introduced by the French colonialists. For a fortnight before Shrove Tuesday, parades and street parties are held throughout the city.

Bourbon Street is right at the heart of it all; though, beware, it’s also the heart of drunken, if harmless, reveller land — where overrefreshed young women can be persuaded to whip off their tops in return for a string of beads.

Because of its colonial history — first under the French, then the Spanish — New Orleans has a greater European feel than the rest of the U.S.

The Turtle Bay bar, on Decatur Street, is more raucous British pub than American bar. Here’s the place to watch the local American Football team, the New Orleans Saints, who brought a little fairytale cheer to the battered city last year when they won the Superbowl.


Legacy: While some areas of New Orleans look no different, others are have been reclaimed by nature after Hurricane Katrina


The smarter part of town is the Garden District, all creamy wedding-cake colonial ansions straight out of Gone With The Wind. You’ll pass the upscale restaurant, Herbsaint, on St Charles Avenue, known for sauteed jumbo shrimp with prawns.

As you work on your Louisiana brown Jamaica rice risotto, you’ll see — and hear — the St Charles Streetcar rumble by. There is no streetcar named Desire, but these Twenties timber-and-iron carriages have all the romance and heart-racing, glamorous thrill that Tennessee Williams bottled in the play. The streetcar is only$1.25 a ride.


United spirit: When the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl, the whole city celebrated in the streets


New Orleans hasn’t completely recovered all its pre-Katrina romance. There are large stretches of the city that remain ravaged by the hurricane.

Jungle has swallowed up some houses that were under 14 ft of water for a month. Many others, though, have been rebuilt (some by Brad Pitt, through his Make It Right foundation).

The tours aren’t ghoulish. I encourage you to take them. They will remind you of the horrors that might have killed this great city, if it wasn’t so exceptionally alive and so vital to America’s musical, spiritual and historical soul.


Travel Facts
TheCountry Inn & Suites Hotel, 315 Magazine Street, has double rooms from £80 a night B&B (001 504 324 5400, www.countryinns.com). British Airways offers return flights to New Orleans, via Dallas, Chicago or Miami, in conjunction with American Airlines from £419 (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com).


source: dailymail