Perhaps I went in with too much expectations. New Orleans was sitting at the very top of the U.S. cities that I have been wanting for visit. This itch has been with me for nearly a decade. The city has everything I like. Cajun food! Jazz! Gambling! Drinking!
Never meet your heroes, they say. Perhaps they should also say never visit your dream city.
New Orleans is a city awaiting for the best version of itself. This is the kindest way I could say what was really going through my mind: New Orleans is a shitty place that is wasting all the great things that are available to it.
Food? I love cajun food, but street-level quality of the food is not that great, and expensive cajun food is very good but not paradigm-shifting. Beignet from Cafe Du Monde is delicious, but the cafe itself is disgusting. Most restaurants did not serve more than two types of hot sauce--Tobasco and Crystal.
Jazz? Shocking how few jazz clubs there actually were on Frenchmen Street. I would have a better shot at listening to good jazz in New York, Chicago or even Washington D.C.
Drinks? Cheap, disgusting garbage for 18-year-olds. One would think New Orleans would be the city for cocktails, or excellent local bourbons and rums. Not so.
Gambling? No riverboat casino. Just a sad little Harrah's.
Even the tarot card reading that I got off Bourbon Street was crap. And this is the U.S. capital of voodoo and occult!
I wonder if the city does not attract talent, the types of young, ambitious men and women with snobby aesthetics pursuing the better version of everything. (They are often referred to as "hipsters.")
