Jazz, poker, the sugar industry, voodoo - these are some of the things New Orleans has brought to America. They are all a little bit dirty yet somehow seductive. That might be New Orleans in a nutshell finds Debbie Porteous.
The bartender at the hotel pool bar says Frenchman St is what people think Bourbon St should be like ''but just isn't''.
We listen intently to her because it is 35degC and sticky in New Orleans, and she is mixing icy pink vodka-laden drinks in the only blender working in a six-block radius after a power cut that has also locked us out of our hotel rooms.
She sells Frenchman St, in the city's Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood, and reputedly the city's musical heart these days, so well that we go there.
It turns out there is, as she says, ''music everywhere over there. You can just walk out of one place, think `what's that weird electric funk jazz noise over there', and go see that.''
The locals don't seem to mind rubbing shoulders with visitors as jazz and swing emits from back-to-back bars and restaurants in cottages along the street.
In the Spotted Cat Music Club cafe, a seven-piece big band hits the big notes; down the street at Yuki Izikawa, a giant man pours his soul into a trombone while a silent Japanese film screens on a wall behind him.
Across the road the six-piece Ibervillionaires get the local crowd, even one woman well into her 80s, dancing at The Maison.
If jazz and live jamming is what you came to New Orleans for, it seems this is where to go. It is a fine end to a day spent exploring and admiring the fern-clad architecture of ...
THE FRENCH QUARTER
Here's the hard word on the French Quarter.
The truth of Bourbon St is it smells like a big ole potty.
More specifically, it smells cigarettes, urine, dead fish, vomit and booze.
It's overcrowded (though you get the feeling a local wouldn't be caught dead here) and grimy, and hookers, their pimps, bar touts, jukebox music and glaring neon signs advertising alcohol jostle for your attention.
It's a part of New Orleans' history, so check it out - you might even come across a marching band - but one visit's probably enough.
There are heaps of other, way better parts of the French Quarter.
In fact, get lost in any of the other parts and soak up the buildings, the shops and the food.
This could take you many happy hours.
And when your feet are sore, hire a bike and wheel around the more peaceful and pretty northern end of the quarter.
STILL MOPPING UP
To be fair, three days in New Orleans is not enough time to do all the things one knows one should.
Like really get a feel for how the neighbourhoods worst affected by Hurricane Katrina are getting on 10 years later.
Flitting around the edges of the central city, which largely escaped damage due to its height above sea level, you still see signs of destruction.
Weatherboards on homes are missing up to a certain height.
Some buildings appear to still be abandoned, boarded up and scrawled on with red crosses and graffiti.
Cladding and bricks are discoloured.
But, to be honest, it is hard to tell in many cases whether the dishevelled homes, gardens, footpaths and public spaces crowded by grass and weeds left to grow long and limp in the heat are like that because of the hurricane or were simply always like that.
Even in the most opulent neighbourhoods, the ''neutral ground'' (the space for streetcars in the middle of streets) is overgrown and unkempt, dying even ...
DEATH AND SURVIVAL IN NEW ORLEANS
New Orleans has a morbid preoccupation with death.
One of the first things you notice on the drive in from the airport is a massive above-ground mausoleum-filled cemetery.
Because of the city's high water table, people are entombed above ground, rather than buried.
Nola is proud to be the city that brought voodoo to America and there is a Death Museum.
A short cab ride from the city centre is the St Roch (pronounced rock) cemetery No1.
A perfect hour can be spent marvelling in peace at tombs that were themselves half submerged in Katrina.
Inside the chapel, to the right of Jesus lying prostrate in a glass box, is a very strange attraction that should not be missed.
It is a prosthesis and crutch-filled shrine to St Roch, the patron of good health.
Marvel at the bits of fake leg and suchlike left behind by callers seeking help with disease or deformity as a sign of gratitude to the saint.
After the cemetery, a brief, slightly nerve-racking and very sticky period of seeming lostness in one of New Orleans' particularly dishevelled neighbourhoods is rewarded with a happy accidental find.
For those on the verge of heatstroke after walking 300m in the New Orleans heat, the historic St Roch Market appears like an oasis of hipster cool.
Go there!
Have a cold local beer!
Have a kale smoothie!
You made it!
You will only wish there was more time to try more of the local produce, Creole food and kitchen staples on offer, but time marches on.
Like a Mardi Gras float parade ...
FLOATING IN NEW ORLEANS
Crane your neck anywhere in New Orleans and you'll probably spot a fading string of beads strung over a sign or a pole.
The beads are remnants of the previous Mardi Gras.
Throwing bead necklaces from floats during Mardi Gras is a thing, and Mardi Gras is big.
Unfathomably big. Next year, there will be 66 parades across the city during the month of carnival season.
The largest will have 67 floats and 60 marching bands. One parade will have a Star Wars theme, another will feature dogs dressed up.
There will be lots of dancing and stuff thrown around.
It sounds messy, weird and awesome.
Like New Orleans.
For those of us that fortune took to the Big Easy at another time of year, the Mardi Gras vibe can be experienced at the slightly less chaotic Mardi Gras World, where workers build floats year round.
For a more laid-back, educational kind of float, try a paddle-boat tour on the mighty Mississippi.
This massive river, brown and smelly, is alive, probably not with fish but certainly with ships transporting the river states' goods, oil and fuel, via the Port of New Orleans, to the ocean.
The paddle-wheeler takes you past hurricane-dilapidated wharves, the beginnings of what appear, to the non-engineer's eye, to be very low-walled levee systems, the Louisiana National Guard's HQ, great views of the city and Domino Sugar's Chalmette Refinery, the nation's largest sugar refinery, which brings us to . . .
A SWEET TO FINISH
If sweetness is your thing, New Orleans has it in spades.
Louisiana's state food is a doughnut smothered in powdered (icing) sugar.
Much of the state's early wealth was linked to sugar plantations spread along the Mississippi's banks.
Some have been restored for an insight into a nation-shaping period of American history, and are also worth a visit.
Sugar, too, is the main ingredient in praline (pronounced praw-leen), a sickly sweet nutty treat touted on almost every New Orleans corner.
Round out your sugar high with an oyster or a dozen, a meat-stuffed po'boy (sub sandwich), some gumbo (a kind of stewy soup, not spicy) or jambalaya (a hot jumble of meat, vegetables, stock and rice).
Then you will have really arrived in the Big Easy.
• The writer travelled to New Orleans courtesy of Air New Zealand.
If you go
Getting there: From December 15, Air New Zealand flies direct to Houston, with connections from Dunedin. From there, it is a short flight to New Orleans.
Where to stay: Let the good times roll on the rooftop pool or in the legendary Sazerac Bar, or just experience luxury the way it was meant to be at The Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans' CBD. Only a block from the French Quarter and the squillions of great restaurants and bars in the area.
When to go: For Mardi Gras, go between January 6 and February 9 next year. February to May the weather is cooler and the city is pleasant. September through December is warming up and nice, though it is the height of hurricane season. Be prepared for stifling heat and humidity, and possible hurricanes, between May and September.
