My husband and I just spent a few days in New Orleans. The City is special for us because we first met there, later honeymooned there, and have returned many, many times over the years to celebrate our wedding anniversary in July. Yes, we usually go in July and, yes, we went during the heat wave this year, but since temperatures here in South Texas have been running well over 100º every day, we figured that days in the 90s would be pleasant by comparison. But then we forgot about the humidity, which brought us a new appreciation for the word “sultry.”

     Then again, sultry is part of the charm of New Orleans, which isn’t called The Big Easy for nothing. Lazy languid days, brief tropical showers, hidden patio gardens in which to sit and rest, while strains of street jazz play in the distance. Nobody hurries here; the biggest hustle may be racing to catch a streetcar. New Orleans is a walking city, but no one really walks here either, they saunter, stopping periodically to enjoy a little lagniappe, to poke into an antique shop, or to gawk at the beauty of the French-Creole architecture and fern-laden iron balconies.

     Tradition has it that New Orleans got the moniker “The Big Easy” because black musicians in the early 1900s found getting gigs here easier than in other Southern cities. There was, at one time, also a dance hall in town called The Big Easy. Over the years, though, writers and journalists began to apply the phrase to the city as a whole because of its gentle people and slower pace of life, and that meaning resonates with me. I love cities, but while New Orleans is the largest city in Louisiana (at roughly 365,000 population in the City proper, just over a million in the greater metropolitan area), it qualifies as a small city more by virtue of what it offers than by its size: outstanding museums and art collections, fabulous restaurants, wonderful music and entertainment, gracious hotels, great shopping experiences, and a unique cultural history. These are the things I look for everywhere I travel.

     But a city, any city,  is more than just the sum of its parts. I am especially attuned to how a destination, city or country or region, “feels” when I visit. I look for places that have “a there there,” to modify a quote from Gertrude Stein about Oakland, CA (wherein she said there was “NO there there”). So many cities in America these days are just vast expanses of four-lane roadways punctuated by nondescript shopping centers and endless Walmarts with the occasional turn-in to a residential neighborhood. There is no real downtown center to anchor them, much less any overall character to describe them. You could just be in Anywhere, USA. 

     One of the things I love about living in San Antonio is that there is a “there” here. There is a downtown, in which one can walk to restaurants, shops, and attractions and experience first-hand the culture and the history of the City. The distinct, dominant character is decidedly Hispanic, Mexican mostly, with Spanish spoken almost everywhere and Latinos comprising 63% of the resident population, but SA is also a hugely diverse “minority-majority” city. Elements of the  heritage from all those original native peoples and later settlers can be identified everywhere in our foods, music, art and architecture, and in the many different ethnic festivals and celebrations held city-wide each year. 

     New Orleans satisfies my heart’s desire in this same respect because there is definitely “a there there.” In our recent stay, we visited old haunts (literally, the Voodoo shrine of Marie Laveau in St. Louis Cemetery) and explored new ones, such as a most interesting pharmacy museum (did you know that the very first licensed pharmacy in the US was in New Orleans?) The pharmacy museum happens to be next door to the Napoleon House, famous for it po’boys and mufflettas, which I can’t even begin to describe! We had crawfish étouffée at Deanie’s, a local favorite, and a French 75 (made the original way with cognac, not gin) at the Richelieu Bar at Arnaud’s before enjoying our usual anniversary dinner. We strolled Jackson Square, spoke with artists exhibiting their works along Pirate’s Alley, and of course, I visited Chapel Hats on St. Peter Street, where I bought yet another great, packable straw hat with a big black bow in the back. We also visited authors’ haunts this time, including the Faulkner Bookshop (in the house where Faulkner lived early on and wrote some short stories when he was young and just starting out) just a few doors up from the hat shop. And then, of course, we always ended up at Cafe dú Monde and the French Market.

     So, yes, it was hot and sticky and we were forced to call an Uber from wherever we had finally found ourselves, but New Orleans knows no equal in terms of good vibes and fond memories. I could rapture on and on about The Big Easy, but I have to stop because I have an urge to make red beans and rice for dinner tonight. 

     After all, it’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy.