New Orleans or the 'Big Easy'

Sugar coated Beingets and cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde. Whenever I visit my son in the US he makes sure that we do a couple of fun trips during my time spent with them. This time,we were going to New Orleans for 6 days, spending them with my DIL’s relatives. “You say Noo Orlins,” he said, “ not New Orleens like we say,” he explained and ofcourse my grand- daughter giggled!.

Harrahs the casino in down town New Orleans My sons MIL had moved to Tennessee to help them with the kids, both being docs and so it meant, we needed a larger car to travel to Lousiana in comfort -- driving down rather than fly. So he bought a huge Pilot 8 seater for us to sit in comfort and carry our luggage too. New Orleans is a Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico. Nicknamed the "Big Easy," it's known for its round-the-clock nightlife, vibrant live-music scene and spicy, unusual cuisine reflecting its history as a melting pot of French, African and American cultures. Like in my home state of Goa, New Orleans is known for its Mardi Gras, the late-winter carnival famed for raucous costumed parades and street parties. I have seen raucous parades in The Netherlands as a student, but I have heard these are pretty wild.

The iconic Fleur de lis seen all over New Orleans All over the city I could see the the fleur de lis which has become the symbol of New Orleans especially, after Katrina. It is symbolic in many ways. Spiritually, it represents an Iris, a beautiful purple bloom that symbolizes the holy Trinity. Fleur is French for flower, de meaning of and li meaning three. It is the symbol of the New Orleans Saints. But while it is now seen as the mark of the state, it was once used to mark slaves says an article on the net. "Code noir, those words are French and mean black code," said slave historian Dr. Ibrahima Seck. The black code was a set of regulations adopted in Louisiana in 1724 from other French colonies around the world, meant to govern the state's slave population. Seck said those rules included branding slaves with the fleur de lis as punishment for running away.

The famous Bayou's of New Orleans But there is a scary part of New Orleans which makes my son swear he would never live there. Flooding and the Katrina hurricane were so destructive primarily because levees around New Orleans, Louisiana failed. Levees are water barriers built to prevent flooding (parts of New Orleans have an elevation that is lower than sea level). Hurricane Katrina flattened the city as it was a Category 5 hurricane. It made landfall on Louisiana in August 2005, causing catastrophic damage, particularly in the city and the surrounding areas, and over 1,200 deaths. Very heavy winds also contributed to the damage, but flooding was the most destructive.

All of us in a park feeding the birds According to recent crime data, New Orleans' violent crime rate is almost three times than the rest of America. Infact while we visited there had been a shooting on the street we had visited the day before with ten people seriously shot. New Orleans is sinking, according to a study using NASA airborne radar. The subsidence, or sinking rates, of the city and surrounding areas is caused by naturally occurring geologic and human-caused processes.The subsidence is primarily caused by groundwater pumping and surface water pumping (known as dewatering).

Enjoying ourselves at Cafe du Monde The food here is in a class of it’s own. I loved Gumbo and enjoyed eating it with a freshly fried dosa rather than rice! Crawfish Etouffee, Jambalaya, Red Beans and Rice,. Beignets & Po-Boys the food is in a category I have never tasted before. Our visit at night to Cafe Café du Monde was a must do according to Anne our hostess. It’s a renowned open-air coffee shop located on Decatur Street and we had to wait in line for a table it’s that packed! We enjoyed Beignets with coffee like everyone else around us were and it was amazing to see so many Indian tourists around, though they were American Indian, not like me out of India.

The steamboat Creole Queen on which we chugged down the Missippi river What I enjoyed most of all was the steam boat trip which my son took me for. It was expensive at 42$ each ticket. The steam- boat Creole Queen, brought up images I had wallowed in as a little girl reading books written by Mark Twain. He was the beloved, bewhiskered author of such American classics as "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"and "The Prince and the Pauper." Mark Twain was known originally as Samuel Clemens from Hannibal, Missouri. There he played in the mud with the boy who would appear in his books as Huck Finn and adored a girl across the street who would inspire Becky Thatcher. Apparently more than 130 years after Twain wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," you can visit Hannibal and tour his childhood home almost exactly as it was when he lived there -- there's even a white picket fence waiting to be whitewashed.