New Orleans is a place unique for its food, culture and people. Here, tradition is strong. Many of the restaurants and recipes have been served a long time. You will feel that tradition as you walk along the streets of the French Quarter, the original section of the city dating to the 1760"s.

Cafe du Monde on Decater has been serving up cafe au lait and begniets since 1880, Central Grocery invented the Muffalata sandwich. Po Boys, red beans & rice, Jambalaya, etuffe is really American cuisine paysan style and they still serve it up. Jean Lafiette's bar is still serving drinks on Bourbon street.

 These people love their city not for it's affluence or it's easy life. The majority of people I met didn't have either, but they did have a joy. Everybody smiled and said hello, would stop for a short chat or advise you on any particular thing. There was a good sense of  street level humanity all around. This was after their big storm and maybe that has something to do with it. I feel that this is another tradition of New Orleans that has always been here. Whether it's their joy of food, music or art they display it freely. It's who they are. I met an  artist while walking along Frenchman Street with an interesting life story and philosophy. He's a well known local and talks about his views in a youTube interview. Click his picture above.

 Jean Lafitte's old blacksmith shop where Andrew Jackson and the ex-pirate planned the battle of New Orleans against the British Army. It's now a landmark Bar.

Architecture alone makes this city special. Much of the work was done by the Spanish in the 1760's.

Although founded by the French in 1718, the spot was nothing more than "a hundred wretched hovels in a malarious wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators" Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix 1721. It was given to the Spanish by the British as compensation for taking Florida from them. They also took much of Louisiana in their colonial expansion of the 1700's. Napoleon got it back before selling it in 1803. The architecture today is mostly Spanish influenced, although they call it the French Quarter.