USA Guide
Louisiana
New Orleans
It is painfully clear, since the events of August 2005, that there's a lot more to New Orleans than its image as a nonstop party town. And while this very special place has lost none of its power to bewitch, visiting New Orleans after the floods requires sensitivity and compassion. Even at the best of times this was a contradictory city, repeatedly striking you with the stark divisions between rich and poor (and, more explicitly, between white and black); years after Katrina, with the emotional and physical scars still running deep, those contradictions are writ larger than ever. While you can still party in the French Quarter and the Faubourg Marigny till the early hours, dancing to great jazz bands and gorging on delicious Creole food, just ten minutes away entire neighbourhoods struggle to rebuild, blanketed, despite all the best intentions of their pioneering returnees, by a ghostly silence. That's not to say that enjoying life is inappropriate in today's New Orleans – while it was dealt a crippling blow, let down not only by nature but also by the federal and local governments, the city's vitality and joie de vivre remain real, buffeted but not beaten. The melange of cultures and races that built the city still gives it its heart; not "easy," exactly, but quite unlike anywhere else in the US – or the world.
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