New Orleans - Beads brightly festoon people, lamp posts, and garden gates.
In the city by day, you can forgive yourself for wondering why people and vendors are draped in children’s beads – some strands so long they reach the navels.
It is only at night that the secret of the silly bits of plastic is revealed. Take a walk down Bourbon Street about 10 o’clock at night. You will enter a sea of people where the street is closed and mounted cops create a barrier between the revellers and their baser selves.
On Bourbon there are three places to have a good time: inside the pub, outside and on the balcony. Outside, in the middle of Bourbon, beads fly as jazz, metal, house spill out from the clubs lining the street. Look around, and count how happy revellers toss the beads down to those brave enough to show skin, a little or a lot, and freak out at the sight of an old couple decked out like a Christmas tree.
Welcome to New Orleans, or Nawlins as the locals say: the city of Mardi Gras, drinking and good food.
New Orleans is in the deep south of the US, a city set in the Mississippi bayous of the state of Louisiana.
Nearly 10 years ago, the city was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina, but you would not be able to tell if it were not for some of the new buildings among the beautiful old architecture and the memorials that pepper the city.
Before travelling here, I had asked several American friends what to expect. Many had said it was like another country – and they weren’t wrong.
The streets are filled with residents and foreigners; the aromas of fried everything permeate the air, and someone is always trying to sell you something, from art to food, music – even a psychic reading.
The area around the renowned French Quarter is alive with music from early morning until deep into the night – from brass bands on the corners to hippy hobos playing tin drums in the alleys.
Around Jackson Square there is more entertainment: magic shows, knife eaters, and fortune tellers line the streets, waiting to relieve your pocket of a few dollars.
These are all the “free” things you can do on a day trip in New Orleans. There are also tours that explore the cemeteries, history, plantation, river and occult.
If you plan to miss the crowd, enjoy a carriage ride through the streets, or ride in the American tuk-tuk. For those who are fit, cycle around the city. Students and those on a rand budget may walk or use the streetcars and buses.
It is easy to work up an appetite with all the activity, but New Orleans will not leave you hungry.
From gumbo to oysters, po’ boys and muffulettas, starch with seafood and meat, spicy and fried are all on the menu. Coffee and beignets are a staple in this melting pot city, which give a sweet treat at any time of the day.
New Orleans, the city on a river, was once a large slave outpost.
Today it’s an outpost for those enslaved by the pursuit of a good time.
Gemma Ritchie, Saturday Star