Sunday on Frenchman Street

Frenchman street by day

After breakfast, we set off to explore the Frenchman Street area. The walk takes us through gorgeous tree shaded streets, walking on old brick pavements that are frequently uneven. The houses are painted in a multitude of colours and frequently adorned with exotic plants and in all areas, there are mardi gras beads festooned on trees, plant pots, decks where there are rocking chairs.

Frenchman street is throbbing with the sounds of lazy soft jazz, the buildings are more dilapidated but all look like they can tell a few stories. The coffee shops all seem to have a more ethnic feel none of the big chains are in evidence here. The record store has an endearing note on the door, please don’t let the cat out! Inside the store there are rack upon rack of CD’s and vinyl’s and headphones for customers to listen to music before they buy – very old fashioned. In the back of the store there’s also a stage area all set up for a band to play on. As we leave Frenchman Street we run into the French Market, a huge area with lots of small enterprises selling their goods, places to eat local food and of course jazz music. We stop for refreshment and a cool down in the airconditioned bar of The Crescent City Brewhouse, where we lunch on crawfish gumbo and pulled pork & crawfish boudins. It’s amazing how long you can make one drink and a glass of water last when you’re hot! Time for a bit of souvenir shopping, a very hot a sweaty event and afterwards we can’t wait to get back to the cool of the hotel.

Jazz at Maison

The walk back to Frenchman Street is still hot and steamy, the lights are gradually dimming and a few people are beginning to sit on their front steps in rocking chairs. We pause for a drink in our adopted local Cosimos, no tourist’s other than us in here tonight. There are however some interesting characters, the tattooed man with the 3-legged dog, the loud guy at the end of the bar and the lady with the chameleon! In Frenchman Street, there’s a night art market going on with lots of stalls selling pictures, jewellery etc. At Adolphos we discover there’s a long waiting time of over an hour but no worries he’ll call us. Names noted on the list we wander into Maison and listen to some soft, sshht, sshht, jazz with a good female vocalist before heading back to Adolpho’s after all we don’t want to miss the call. The food upstairs is wonderful, shrimp and crawfish marinara linguini with salad and garlic bread to die for. As we leave the restaurant, there’s a great mardi gras band playing, people are dancing in the street, a guy’s selling beer and of course the traffic has slowed to a crawl so everyone can listen to the beat from the street. The walk back is very deep south, hot humid air, people lolling on street corners and the golden night light over the city.

The Hotel St Pierre at night