I was walking down Esplanade Avenue, in the 2200 block to be exact. It is the merry month of March. It is 80 degrees. Next month, night herons will be nesting in the oak trees on the next block. The rhythm of the year rolls on. Jazz Fest is coming.

Laissez les bon temps rouler.

People who come to speak French in New Orleans are soon disappointed. This most Francophile of cities is not francophone. We speak English, just like you do. It is in other ways that Orleanians are different from everyone else in America…

People come to New Orleans for all sorts of reasons. Some times are for business and some times are pleasure. When both are mixed together, it is the best of all possible worlds. Making money by making memories is the New Orleans. Living the good life is what we do for a living. We get by, by giving.

Follow your dreams.

Did you know that the French Impressionist painter, Edgar Degas lived in New Orleans? He did. He lived on the 2300 block of Esplanade Avenue. You can read the signs out front. It is the houses with the statue of the ballerina out front. One of Degas’ paintings, that he made in New Orleans, hangs in the New Orleans Museum of Art. Another one, that you may have seen, hangs in France.

The Degas House is now a museum. The hold weddings there almost every weekend in the courtyard. I watch the second line parades go by my house. I live in an inn.

The Degas House is a bed and breakfast as well as a museum, a wedding venue, and an international cultural treasure. You can sleep in a building where a famous painter slept. I know a house where you can sleep where a failed painter slept. Which would you prefer?

People play on the 2300 block of Esplanade Avenue. The Derbes Mansion, with its extravagant parties, is across the street, behind the statue in the park. They film movies there. Sabrina Carpenter popped in last weekend. What a motorcade! It was bigger than when the President of France visited the Degas House.

The 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue is another affair. The destination is only the end of the line. I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet. People come to New Orleans for all sorts of reasons. When you are doing what you love, you love the one you’re with.

There was a battered guitar case on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue. It was leaning against some stairs that lead to a door that opens but rarely. I have never seen it open. Everyone who lives in this house goes in the side. Nobody goes in the front.

The guitar case was fresh from the airport. MSY stands for Moisant Stock Yards. Louis Armstrong International Airport used to be a beef lot before it was an airstrip. John Moisant was a barnstormer, flying his biplane cross country. He crashed in the field. Before the New Orleans airport was named after Louis Armstrong, it was named after John Moisant. In some ways, it still is.

The past never really goes away in New Orleans. Instead, it is set free.

When you visit New Orleans, stay on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue. Dreams come true in New Orleans. Dreams come true at La Belle Esplanade. We really do live on a beautiful street.