Getting Groovy in New Orleans

There are plenty of streets in New Orleans.  We live in a kaleidoscope of a city where you never know what pleasant surprise you’ll find when you turn a corner.  If you are bored in New Orleans, it isn’t the city’s fault.  There is always something groovy going on everywhere in New Orleans, even when nothing is officially going on.  When you are getting groovy in New Orleans, you know you’ve got your real New Orleans groove on.  Dance like nobody is watching.  Nobody is.

Take it from your New Orleans goodwill ambassador:

There is tourist New Orleans, and, then, there is the rest of New Orleans, where people choose to live.  After Hurricane Katrina, the city’s population was officially zero.  Everyone had to evacuate and everyone who lives here now had to make a conscious decision to move back.  Civic pride in New Orleans is high as the sky.  Talk to anyone about New Orleans and they will tell you how much they love living in this wonderful city we call home.

GETTING GROOVY IN NEW ORLEANS.

Home is where the heart is.  New Orleans has miles and miles and miles of heart.  La Belle Esplanade is a five-suite B&B hotel in the heart of the most interesting part.

You never know what you’ll find when you turn a corner in New Orleans.

Last time I counted, there are 70 restaurants within a mile radius of La Belle Esplanade.

There are five family-run museums within eight blocks.  There are four bigger, institutional museums, city, state, federal, within a mile of our address.

All of New Orleans is fascinating, no matter where you are.  Canal Street is 12 blocks behind La Belle Esplanade, it’s where the Canal Streetcar runs.  The Canal Streetcar stops at the end of Esplanade Avenue in front of City Park—right at the end of our street.  There are plenty of ways to get around New Orleans.  Visit like you belong.  Visit New Orleans like you live here.

When you are ready to explore the real New Orleans off the usual tourist radar, the best place you can choose to stay is at La Belle Esplanade.  Frau Schmitt (who is the better half of this operation) and I (your humble narrator) are happy to share everything we know about this wonderful city we call home.  New Orleans is a city full of pleasant surprises.  I’m surprised every day and I live here.

NOT EVERYONE IS GETTING GROOVY IN NEW ORLEANS.

I know what you see on TV and in the movies.  New Orleans is nothing like that.  There are parts like that.  Girls gone wild and whatnot, but that’s not the part of New Orleans you want to spend a lot of time in, unless you’re that kind of person.  You can.  I’m not here to judge.  I go to Bourbon Street occasionally but drinking grain alcohol out of a novelty cup, catching a strip show, and buying a novelty tee shirt isn’t usually on my list of things to do on any given day.   I occasionally visit Bourbon Street, usually when we have family from out of town.

There is a whole, wide-open, wild and groovy city out here, where people choose not just to visit but to live here.  Loving New Orleans is like living in Heaven.  There are Roman Catholic churches and Roman Catholic cemeteries everywhere, except where there aren’t.  Canal Street is the dividing line.  There is a difference between Uptown and Downtown.  We are all New Orleanians, all of us, in this whole groovy shebang together.

When you are ready to visit New Orleans, you know where you should stay:

La Belle Esplanade is a tiny craft hospitality B&B hotel.  It isn’t grandma’s house stuffed with mothballed antiques and run by amateurs like you think a B&B should be.  It is run by two professional New Orleans goodwill ambassadors with all the amenities you would expect from a boutique hotel, like personality, air conditioning, unique decor, hair dryers, private bathrooms, spa linens, and a curated breakfast every day of local delicacies accompanied by coffee with chicory (the New Orleans blend) and good conversation.

Craft hospitality means we take an interest in what interests you.  Don’t just explore off-the-rack tourist New Orleans.  Visit like you live here.  Discover what it means to fall in love with the real New Orleans.

You are the right website.  Check our calendar by clicking the “Check Availability” button on this screen, or CLICK HERE.  We only have five suites so we tend to fill up early during busy seasons.  Plan ahead.  Stay for three nights and get a complimentary walking tour of our neighborhood after breakfast by a licensed New Orleans tour guide.  It’s a $70 value that we offer to our guests to help them get into an authentic New Orleans state of mind.  Just ask to book the tour when you check in.  We’ll take it from there.

Follow La Belle Esplanade on Facebook and on Instagram.  We post 2 or three times a day to keep you in a New Orleans state of mind.  La Belle Esplanade also sponsors a sister blog called, naturally enough, “A New Orleans State of Mind.”  Check that one out.  We are proud sponsors of that blog.  That guy is doing excellent work over there.  He’s more than a poet.

Maybe you’ll meet him while you are here.  You’ll bump into the most interesting people in our part of New Orleans.  Read the rest of our website and make a reservation before someone else takes it.