New Orleans, two ways.

Tchotchkes, crispy rice, and nothing to do with the Super Bowl

and

Feb 13, 2025

ILANA: Greetings from…the road

The most impromptu trip I’ve ever booked was less than 48 hours from departure and it was to New Orleans where Maya, my sister, lives. Faced with an unexpected move and a house carefully curated with three years worth of her life, I did what all sisters would do in times of crisis and booked a flight.

The [mostly miniature] objects gathered from around Maya’s home, categorized broadly into: baby / hands, aquatic / animal, vessel / tray. Highly recommend this as a base for a game of Eye Spy.

A few weeks ago I asked a friend where she considers home and I thought about my answer too. There’s many versions of home, corresponding to different seasons of my life, possessions, and people. The latter is most often my sister.

Thrown into the boxes, packing tape, and logistics of Maya’s move, I’m again thinking about houses, home, and homemaking. An eavesdropping session at Lamara in New Orleans showed me that I’m not the only one. The 76 year old woman, we’ll call her Woman 1, next to me spent the better half of the lunch hour talking about her experience with “van life.” She was introducing the lifestyle to another woman, Woman 2, who was there with her daughter. I know it was her daughter because she was giving tech advice and explaining her appearance (the micro-bladed eyebrows are new, as is the jumpsuit) before Woman 1 arrived. Van-curious, Woman 2 retired and sold everything in South Florida and drove to Louisiana. She’s 69 and her boyfriend lives in Anchorage, Alaska. I wonder how they met, living in the most opposite possible corners of this country. She expressed no desire to own a house, let alone anything of material permanence and I saw her face begin to soften as Woman 1 described the flexibility van life affords.

Woman 1 spends her summers in the mountains, usually Big Horn or the Tetons, but is thinking about heading to the Pacific Northwest early this summer instead. She called this “God’s country.” Her tolerance for the van is about 4 weeks at a time. After that, she craves a real shower, groceries, and city. Her house is hitched to her Dodge so she’s “always set up” and has the option to hit the road, house-free. It seems important that she has the option to take prolonged physical distance from her house. For this exact reason, I begin to wonder where this woman calls home. Is it where she has family? The Tetons and Big Horn? Where there’s warm weather? Driving on a familiar landscape? She answered this before taking Woman 2 and her daughter to see the van: “My life is there, it’s a little home.”

Was it completely invasive of me to have listened so closely to this conversation? Probably. But what a thrilling portal into a different type of living this was. It also felt particularly poignant to the reason for my trip. New Orleans, where the small size of the city and high concentration of cool and creative people, makes stories like this easy to come by. I highly recommend it for a weekend or longer.

My New Orleans top 6:

Hotel Peter and Paul: go for the impeccable interiors, stay for the Saturday morning yoga in the chapel)
Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park: go for the 1,800 lb “Spider” by Louise Bourgeois, stay for the grassy hills
Blue Dream: go for the perfect vintage slip, stay for the impeccable curation
Manolito: go for the perfect piña, stay for the patio
Leo’s Bread: go for the sourdough loaves, stay for open-face bagel sandos
Art by Anna Koeferl: day dream about her Ink Drawings, purchase a more affordable linocut print by her brother, Luke

SYLVIE: Framework for a weekend getaway

There are a lot of cities I want to visit. Tons of places I’m dying to go (I’ll spare you the whole list), but still, nearly every year for the last 5 years, I’ve revisited one city: New Orleans. Now, revisiting a city isn’t a crime, but earlier this week, Ilana asked me a very simple but obvious question: Why do you keep going back?

I know she didn’t mean it in a rude way, truly an inquisitive way. There’s no obvious reason, really. I mean we don’t have any family there nor any family ties. I don’t have any reason to go down for work really (but if you’re reading this and want me to go down for work please know I’m ready and available). It’s an (Big) easy trip, but it’s not that easy, and although it can be cheap at certain times, there are other destinations that are around the same distance and same price that I’ve gone to far less or not at all (looking at you Miami).

I don’t have a great answer other than to say: somehow, we never tire of New Orleans. It has all the makings for a perfect weekend destination.

For one thing, the hotels are excellent. Ilana laid claims on Hotel Peter and Paul, but on a more recent trip we stayed at The Saint Vincent, a stylish upgraded choice in the Lower Garden District with psychedelic wallpaper, equally cozy robes, and a Southern charm without giving colonizer vibes.

I don’t have to tell you the food is good… but I will. It’s one of the only places where we return to the restaurants we’ve been to before. In other spots I go to often (LA, Portland) I try to hit up an entirely new list of culinary experiences. In New Orleans, I crave a return to the spots I hold dear, and they never disappoint.

I always want the crunchy rice salad at Molly’s Rise and Shine, which is not shy on the fish sauce and good even after I’ve eaten their homemade pop-tart
N7 because the garden feels like a magical escape in a surreal dark part of the city
If I don’t go to Bacchanal on a visit, I truly feel like I didn’t go to New Orleans.
Sneaky pickle / Bar Brine for the moment I need some vegetables (even if they’re fried, too).

I think my favorite part about the city though, is that it’s sprawling without feeling remote. I can walk through tons of neighborhoods while conveniently passing all my favorites…Here’s what I mean:

I’ll often start at the top of Magazine St. in the Lower Garden District by heading to Merchant House to stare at some furniture I can’t afford and vintage clothes I don’t even know where to begin with. Then, if I’m feeling particularly masochist, I’ll go into the Saint Vincent and stare at more things I can’t afford in ByGeorge – their store – and take a pit stop in the bathroom, because I usually have to go pee and I know this one to be clean and lovely.

Then I’ll continue on to the next destination, Molly’s Rise and Shine. Along the way, I’ll pop into anything that catches my eye. After, before I continue on a digesting walk, I’ll stop into DNO across the street for a perfect graphic tee to gift my dad as a souvenir.

Then, onwards toting a homemade soda until I end up right in Audubon Park. I like to walk along the edge of the park because the houses along Exposition Blvd (which was built to bring visitors to the entrance of the 1884 World’s Fair) are particularly handsome, and if the time is right, I might even sneak a peek through a window into a renovated colonial-revival hidden behind a large Oak.

I’ll walk up until I meet St. Charles and then it’s time to complete the circle, heading down the street made famous by the street car. I prefer to walk, because I don’t totally get the streetcar system, but either would probably work. I walk until I reach The Chloe, it always surprises me how quickly it comes up. I stop for a spritz in a rocking chair on the porch and then walk a quick 5 minutes down the street to Columns, for a martini and fries, because at that point I can justify another snack.

Then I keep going until my legs give out. At that point, I’ll start to weave in the streets between Magazine and St. Charles which are calm and make it easy to imagine living a life here.

Then it’s a quick active nap (i.e. Instagram) before going to dinner.

See! I covered so much in such a seamless way. It’s a deceivingly lovely city to navigate.

P.S. A special shout-out to the least NOLA thing ever, the World War II Museum. I can tell you’re skeptical, but it is absolutely mind-blowing and an incredibly well-done museum.