The beauty of New Orleans
We were walking through Faubourg Marigny last night having been to friends’ house. The house is an old Creole cottage with exposed brick, a patio, and towering banana trees that yield big plump delicious fruit. The temperature had climbed up into the 70s and there was a damp gulf breeze blowing that was just perfect. Actually the day had been ideal, so ideal, that when I thought I would pull my hair right out of my head from my computer woes, I opted instead of the gym to take the dogs for a long romp through City Park to get some fresh air.
In the evening, as I was walking along the narrow sidewalks of the Marigny, two of the men with us were from out of town and they kept commenting about the architecture, about the neighborhoods, about the entire vocabulary of New Orleans.
In the book I’m reading about New Orleans, there is a passage from 1877 where one Lafcadio Hearn says:
It is not an easy thing to describe one’s first impression of New Orleans; for while it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth, yet it recalls vague memories of a hundred cities. It owns suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, of cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean and of seaports in the tropics. Canal Street, with its grand breadth and imposing facades, gives one recollections of London and Oxford Street and Regent Street; there are memories of Havre and Marseilles to be obtained from the Old French Quarter; there are buildings in Jackson Square which remind one of Spanish-American travel. I fancy that power of fascination which New Orleans exercises upon foreigners is due no less to this peculiar characteristic than to the tropical beauty of the city itself. Whencesoever the traveler may have come, he may find in the Crescent City some memory of his home — some recollection of his Fatherland — some remembrance of something he loves.