The French Quarter
  New Orleans Travel Tip

The allure to the French Quarter is hard to describe. It's more than the stucco, brick and wrought-iron architect of the late 1700's. It's more than the tilting galleries, sculptured doorways and the crooked bricklined courtyard where Tennessee Williams penned "A Streetcar Named Desire".

No longer inhabited by the passionate Creoles, today's doorways lead to gaudy and explicit sex clubs, jazz, blues or piano bars, voodoo haunts and T-shirt shops; the courtyards are places for cafes and musical foray; the tilting iron-wrought galleries are decorated with cheap plastic beads and potted plants. From weathered window sills, spills the aroma of shrimp Creole, crawfish gumbo, sweet pralines and pecan pie. Late in the afternoon the streets become a musical circus with tap dancers dancing, horns blowing and children beating on homemade drums. The regal St. Louis Cathedral dominates the skyline in the square's center and the old Jackson Brewery on the river's bank is a conglomeration of boutiques.

On the sidelines, the mighty Mississippi -- its tremendous current churning up the river bottom giving it a muddy look -- carries paddle wheelers much like it did in the era of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

And not to be dismissed, Cafe du Monde serves Beignets, the irresistible puffy square doughnuts without the hole which surely gave birth to the saying, "You can't just eat one."