Outside the French Quarter

Uptown & the Garden District

If you can see just one thing outside the French Quarter, make it the Garden District. These two neighborhoods are the first places that come to mind when one hears the words "New Orleans," and like the Quarter, it is part of the "sliver by the river" that did not flood after Katrina. It has no significant historic buildings or important museums -- it's simply beautiful. In some ways, even more so than the Quarter, this is New Orleans. Authors as diverse as Truman Capote and Anne Rice have been enchanted by its spell. Gorgeous homes stand quietly amid lush foliage, elegant but ever so slightly (or more) decayed. You can see why this is the setting for so many novels; it's hard to imagine that anything real actually happens here.

But it does. Like the Quarter, this is a neighborhood, so please be courteous as you wander around. Seeing the sights consists mostly of looking at the exteriors of nice houses.

Meanwhile, a little background: Across Canal Street from the Quarter, "American" New Orleans begins. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, an essentially French-Creole city came under the auspices of a government determined to develop it as an American city. As American citizens moved in, tensions between Creole society and the newcomers began to increase. Some historians lay this at the feet of Creole snobbery; others blame the naive and uncultured Americans. In any case, Creole society succeeded in maintaining a relatively distinct social world, deflecting American settlement upriver of Canal Street (uptown); the Americans in turn came to dominate the city with sheer numbers of immigrants. Newcomers bought up land in what had been the old Gravier Plantation (now the uptown area) and began to build a parallel city. Very soon, Americans came to dominate the local business scene, centered along Canal Street. In 1833 the American enclave that we now know as the Garden District was incorporated as Lafayette City, and -- thanks in large part to the New Orleans-Carrollton Railroad, which covered the route of today's St. Charles Avenue streetcar -- the Americans kept right on expanding until they reached the tiny resort town of Carrollton. It wasn't until 1852 that the various sections came together officially as a united New Orleans.

Again, as with the Quarter, it was great good fortune for the crucial economy generated by tourism that the Garden District was essentially undamaged from Katrina and Rita (wind and rain damage here and there, no worse than after even a tropical storm, and no flooding at all), and its beauty remains as intoxicating as ever.

Trolling St. John's Bayou & Lake Pontchartrain

St. John's Bayou is a body of water that originally extended from the outskirts of New Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain, and it's one of the most important reasons New Orleans is where it is today. Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, was commissioned to establish a settlement in Louisiana that would both make money and protect French holdings in the New World from British expansion. Bienville chose the spot where New Orleans now sits because he recognized the strategic importance of "back-door" access to the Gulf of Mexico provided by the bayou's linkage to the lake. Boats could enter the lake from the Gulf and then follow the bayou until they were within easy portage distance of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Area Native American tribes had used this route for years.

The early path from the city to the bayou is today's Bayou Road, an extension of Governor Nicholls Street in the French Quarter. Modern-day Gentilly Boulevard, which crosses the bayou, was another Native American trail -- it led around the lake and on to settlements in Florida.

As New Orleans grew and prospered, the bayou became a suburb as planters moved out along its shores. In the early 1800s, a canal was dug to connect the waterway with the city, reaching a basin at the edge of Congo Square. The bayou became a popular recreation area with fine restaurants and dance halls (as well as meeting places for voodoo practitioners, who held secret ceremonies along its shores). Gradually, New Orleans reached beyond the French Quarter and enveloped the whole area -- overtaking farmland, plantation homes, and resorts.

The canal is gone, filled in long ago, and the bayou is a meek re-creation of itself. It is no longer navigable (even if it were, bridges were built too low to permit the passage of boats of any size), but residents still prize their waterfront sites, and rowboats and sailboats sometimes make use of the bayou's surface. This is one of the prettiest areas of New Orleans -- full of the old houses tourists love to marvel at without the hustle, bustle, and confusion of more high-profile locations. There was some flooding here, particularly on the lakeside bank, near City Park, but for the most part, residents in the immediate area did well, thanks to just enough elevation in both land and house construction. The bayou was on the news when a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crashed along its banks in the early days following the disaster. Despite all this, and the loss of a few trees, it remains picturesque. A walk along the banks and through the nearby neighborhoods is one of our favorite things to do on a nice afternoon.

Getting There -- The simplest way to reach St. John's Bayou from the French Quarter is to drive straight up Esplanade Avenue about 20 blocks (you can also grab the bus that says ESPLANADE at any of the bus stops along the avenue). Right before you reach the bayou, you'll pass St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 (just past Leda St.). It's the final resting place of many prominent New Orleanians, among them Father Adrien Rouquette, who lived and worked among the Choctaw; Storyville photographer E. J. Bellocq; and Thomy Lafon, the black philanthropist who bought the old Orleans Ballroom as an orphanage for African-American children and put an end to its infamous "quadroon balls," where well-bred women of mixed color would socialize with and become the mistresses of white men. Just past the cemetery, turn left onto Moss Street, which runs along the banks of St. John's Bayou. If you want to see an example of an 18th-century West Indies-style plantation house, stop at the Pitot House, 1440 Moss St..

To continue, drive along Wisner Boulevard, on the opposite bank of St. John's Bayou from Moss Street, and you'll pass some of New Orleans's grandest modern homes -- a sharp contrast to those on Moss Street. At this point, you can make a Katrina-damage tour that takes you through the once-flooded neighborhood of Gentilly, all the way to Lake Pontchartrain. Stay on Wisner to Robert E. Lee Boulevard, turn right, drive to Elysian Fields Avenue, and then turn left. That's the University of New Orleans campus on your left, which didn't have as much flooding as some of the other major campuses in the city (such as Dillard), though it did have a great deal of wind damage, and underground electrical systems took on water. Classes have resumed and the campus is coming back to life. At any point, you can take a street off to the left or the right if you wish to go through the neighborhoods in more detail, though by the time you read this, there may be less to see, depending on what sort of plans have been made for reconstruction. Regardless, please remember these are neighborhoods, not sights, and treat whatever you see, even if it's abandoned desolation, with respect.

Turn left onto the broad concrete highway, Lake Shore Drive. It runs for 5 1/2 miles along the lake, and normally in the summer, the parkway alongside its seawall is swarming with swimmers and picnickers. On the other side are more luxurious, modern residences. Thanks to higher ground, these and other houses nearby did not flood, though they did sustain incredible wind damage. Further, the road buckled. About 2 miles down the road to the west is the fishing-oriented Bucktown neighborhood, which was totally devastated by the 17th Street Canal breech, including the marina, where expensive yachts were piled on top of each other by the power of the storm. Commercial fishing fleets (terribly hard hit by the storm) of some kind have been working out of Bucktown since the late 1800s (some local families have been living and working here just about that long). But as engineers need to reclaim some of the area for a temporary floodgate for the canal, fishermen, some of whom have been working this area for decades, may need to move elsewhere. The beloved Sid-Mar's restaurant is gone for good. As you return, you can drive through the Lakeview neighborhood, south of Robert E. Lee, between Canal and City Park. Here, houses look fine on the outside, but watch for the now-fading telltale water marks demonstrating that these homes sat in anywhere from 6 to 10 feet of water. At this writing, many have been gutted, with owners still trying to figure out what to do next. By the time you visit, presumably some will have been renovated or destroyed.

Lake Pontchartrain is some 40 miles long and 25 miles wide. Native Americans once lived along both sides, and it was a major waterway long before white people were seen in this hemisphere. You can drive across it over the 24-mile Greater New Orleans Causeway, the longest bridge in the world.

Floating Across the River to Algiers Point

Algiers, annexed by New Orleans in 1870, stretches across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Generally ignored because of its location, it became a sort of God's country after the hurricane because it did not flood at all, and many services, such as mail delivery, were restored quite quickly. It is easily accessible via the free ferry that runs from the base of Canal Street. Take note: This ferry is one of New Orleans's best-kept secrets -- it's a great way to get out onto the river and see the skyline. With such easy access (a ferry leaves every 15-20 min.), who knows why the point hasn't been better assimilated into the larger city, but it hasn't. Though it's only about 1/4 mile across the river from downtown and the French Quarter, it still has the feel of an undisturbed turn-of-the-20th-century suburb, albeit a little bit beaten up by the storm. Strolling around here is a delightfully low-key way to spend an hour or two.

The last ferry returns at around 11:15pm, but be sure to check the schedule before you set out, just in case.

Historic New Orleans Churches

Church and religion are not likely to be the first things that jump to mind in a city known for its debauchery. But New Orleans remains a very Catholic city -- don't forget that Mardi Gras is a pre-Lenten celebration. In fact, religion of one form or another directed much of the city's early history and molded its culture in countless ways.

The Healing Powers of Beer

The little town of Abita Springs, on the opposite side of Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, was a big destination for elite New Orleanians in the 19th century, who were drawn to its artesian springs of ozone water, for years considered to have restorative or healing powers. Today the town attracts visitors who want to hike through the Piney Woods along the Tammany Trace, those who are on their way to the Honey Island Swamp, and those who are looking to take a deep draft of its famous liquid -- and we don't mean the water. The Abita Brewing Company, at 21084 Hwy. 36, Covington (tel. 800/737-2311 or 985/893-3143; www.abita.com), brews up one of the most successful regional microbrew brands in the country, served in bars and sold in convenience stores throughout Louisiana and across the South. In 1994 the brewery moved down the road, and its original building was converted into the Abita Brewpub, a restaurant and Abita-product central store. Despite the much larger scale of the overall brewing operation, the beer is still made in small batches.

Free tours of the brewery are held on Saturday at 1 and 2:30pm and Sunday at 1pm. Abita Springs is about 45 minutes out of town. Take I-10 west from New Orleans to the causeway (a spectacular drive thanks to the seemingly endless miles of water on either side of the roadway), go east on I-12 toward Slidell (3 miles), take the Abita Springs exit (65), and drive north along Highway 59 (4 miles).