I Love NOLA

New Orleans. Just saying the words makes me think hot, sweaty, sexy, defiant, proud, mischievous. The air feels different here. It hovers, so in the distance the filtered neon lights glow through mist in the most coyly inviting way. You know your a visitor when you're here because the language is meant for natives only. There is a unshakable bond among the New Orleanians. They know their food, their music, and their city is special...unchanged in spirit if not by landscape. They watched their city be swept away and it took a long time, years in some cases, for people to come back. But once the foundations were reestablished, albeit some cracked and eroded, the tentative music began playing again. 

I visited with a native Louisianaian, born and bred in the shadows of the Big Easy. Having lived elsewhere in the recent past, you could tell the city still had it's enchanting affect on him. Here romance has a palpable heartbeat yet the atmosphere is still somewhat unsavory and slightly insidious. Founded by the French, ruled by the Spanish and with the roots of Acadians ("Cajuns" from Canadian Island region of Nova Scotia and all the way down south to Maine) the food and culture that has been maintained is an evolution of artists and heavy on musicians. There wasn't a moment in time during my visit that there wasn't music in the air, whether it the deep throaty song of the tree frogs coming off the marshes or the wail of the saxophone from inside a local venue. New Orleans thumps, it beats, and it never sleeps. I fell in love...