If you're a faithful reader of this blog you probably know I'm a sucker for internet lists, you might call it a guilty pleasure of mine. It's always fun to note how a particular list, say someone's opinion of the greatest movies of all time (which I recently covered), compares to a similar list I might come up with.
This time is wasn't a list that inspired me, I came up with the idea for this one on my own. But I'm not claiming it for myself. Google the theme, and you'll find ten thousand similar lists.
When it comes to travel, people "in the know", want cool, hip, out of the way destinations, far from the maddening crowd so to speak, places you won't discover from mainstream sources. This makes sense because let's face it, crowds of tourists other than yourself that is, can get annoying.
On the other hand, popular tourist destinations attract a lot of people usually for a good reason, they're interesting places to visit. Dullsville, USA usually doesn't make a lot of top ten lists of best travel destinations in the world, even though it may have a great hardware store or watering hole.
What inspired this post was a comment from a former colleague who came back for a visit. Her current job is in New Orleans and it so happened that my son was headed there at the same time as her visit. Although I've been to New Orleans and love it, I felt obliged to ask her for some tips that I could send along to him.
"Well first of all..." she said, "don't go to the French Quarter." That was expected because the French Quarter of New Orleans is usually the first place people generally think of when they think of the Crescent City. So naturally, it's loaded with tourists, day and night. And when people think of the French Quarter, what then immediately comes to mind is Bourbon Street, named after the French Royal family, not the distilled spirit which may seem more appropriate if you've ever visited that world renowned street.
But not visit the French Quarter?
Come on, that's a little like going to New York City and not visiting Times Square, going to L.A. and not visiting Hollywood, or going to London and not visiting Buckingham Palace. Come to think of it, I've been to London twice and still haven't been to Buckingham Palace. But you get the idea.
It turns out that one of my favorite restaurants in the world, Galatoire's, sits directly on Bourbon Street, and hands down my favorite place in New Orleans is just off it. That place, (read on to find out what it is), exists almost entirely for tourists, yet missing it in my humble opinion, is missing out on not only a big chunk of the heart and soul of the city, but on the heart and soul of the United States.
I'd like to say that all the entries on my list carry that much weight, but the truth is this list covers everything from the sublime to the ridiculous. What these entries have in common, beyond their attraction to tourists, is that they are unique experiences that well represent the cities in which they are found. And they are all places I dearly love.
I have intentionally not included sites that are destinations in themselves, so you won't for example find the Taj Mahal, or Machu Picchu here. You also won't find them on my list because I have yet to visit them, another requirement. I've also excluded cultural institutions such as museums, because I don't think I need to convince anyone that say, the Louvre (found on several of these lists) is a worthwhile place to visit, that should be self-evident. And while my list is arranged by city, I haven't included cities themselves on the list as some lists do. Why? Because it's my list dammit.
The point of all this is to mention places that bring me joy, either in the sense of being moved, exhilarated, wowed by them, or simply because they put a smile on my face. What's more, your snooty friends who wouldn't set foot anywhere near these places will roll their eyes, basking in self-gratification over their vastly superior hipness when you let them know how much they meant to you.
In other words, it's a win-win, how cool is that?
OK, here's my list in no particular order of touristy places that in my opinion, are well worth the effort, arranged by the cities in which they reside.
NEW YORK CITY- When I wrote about going to New York and not visiting Times Square, it occurred to me that there is more than one reason to visit a place you know will be overrun with tourists. When I spoke above about the feelings the sites on this list evoke for me, I can assure you that almost sixty years ago when as a small child I first visited The Great White Way, it really did evoke those feelings, every single one of them.
Today, Times Square unfortunately falls short on all of them, which is the reason it's not on my list. Yet I stand by my statement that you have to experience Times Square at least once in your life because it is such an iconic symbol of its city and there is nothing like it, at least outside of Asia. That, I believe puts Times Square in the bucket list category, perhaps a list for another day.
On the other hand, going to the observation deck of the Empire State Building certainly ranks as one of the many New York attractions rating a check on the list of things to do before you kick the proverbial bucket. But it is so much more. First of all, there is no more iconic symbol of New York City than this glorious building.
Although today there are taller buildings in the vicinity, The Empire State continues to dominate the Manhattan skyline, not a small accomplishment.
It was the world's tallest building for forty years, a record held far longer than any building built in at least the last 150 years since the advent of the skyscraper. When the Empire State Building was built, it shattered the previous tallest building record, the Chrysler Building, by 19%. That is obvious from the observation deck of the ESB where the Chrysler Building about a mile away, lovely as it is, looks downright puny by comparison.
That's also obvious from the observation deck of the GE (Formerly RCA) Building, as seen in this, the opening scene of the 1949 film On the Town.
My guess is the filmmakers chose to place the sailor-tourists on the top of the RCA Building instead of the Empire State Building in order to highlight the magnificence of the latter, which appears in many of the shots in this clip.
But take your pick, both buildings are equally magnificent and visiting either, (it's probably not necessary to go to the top of both), is well worth fighting the crowds and the over-the-top admission fees.
My only beef with this scene is that they softened up the lyrics to the song. In the original play, the lyrics (written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green) to the refrain go: " New York New York, a hell of a town."
Which it certainly is.
If fifty bucks a ticket is a little steep for you, for me no trip to the Big Apple is complete without doing the first thing the three sailors did after disembarking form their ship, enter Manhattan by foot, over the Brooklyn Bridge. In fact, when I took my son to New York a few years ago, I planned, unbeknownst to him, that his first entrance into Manhattan would be the same as the sailors', one of the greatest urban experiences possible with the possible exception of, well you'll just have to read on to find out.
Just like the best walk anyone can have anywhere in the world, the next few sites won't set you back a penny or a pence, other than airfare, lodging, meals and incidentals:
WASHINGTON DC- Here's another famous film tourist scene from ten years earlier:
Hokey as this might seem to us in our cynical world, if you truly believe in the ideals if not necessarily the actions of this nation, I defy you to roll your eyes when Mr. Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart) walks into the Lincoln Memorial and reads the words inscribed on the wall of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, observes a young man and his immigrant grandpa reading together the Gettysburg Address, and witnesses an elderly black gentleman who conceivably could have been born into slavery, remove his hat and reverently approach the great Daniel Chester French statue of the 16th president.
If the parts of the Memorial dedicated to Lincoln aren't enough to move you, on one of the steps leading up to the monument are carved four words: "I have a dream" marking the spot where Martin Luther King delivered one of the most important speeches in American History. For my money, standing over those four words written in stone while looking across the Washington Mall toward the U.S. Capitol, have the power to move me far more than the somewhat bombastic memorial to Dr. King, about a half mile away, which is still worth the visit in my opinion.
But wait there's more. Flanking the Lincoln Memorial to the north and south are the two magnificent war memorials, dedicated to the fallen of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Behind the Lincoln Memorial is Memorial Bridge, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia, connecting the literal and symbolic divide between the North and the South. You can cross the bridge by foot into Arlington, Virginia where you will end up at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. There lie the remains of nearly 400,000 American servicemen and women. At the highest point of the cemetery sits the one-time home of General Robert E. Lee, who after deserting his country to join the forces of the Confederacy, had his property confiscated by the Federal government and his land turned into a Union military cemetery just to spite him. Beneath the Lee mansion sits the grave of President John F. Kennedy, and the light from its eternal flame can be seen from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at night. Not far from there sits the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded round-the-clock by members of the U.S. Army.
If there is a more sacred spot in the United States than the Lincoln Memorial and its immediate surroundings, I certainly cannot think of it.
LONDON-
...when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
No truer words could be written which makes selecting a spot in London for a list like this rather difficult. But never fear, I came up with one and as I'm about to write down what it is, I can hear the collective groan from you, dear readers, followed by the comment, "you couldn't have possibly come up with a bigger cliché could you?"
Well in a way, clichés are what this post is all about. So here goes:
Big Ben.
For a little clarification, Big Ben refers to the enormous bell that tolls the hours inside the clock tower of Westminster Palace, perhaps the most well-known government building in the world. (Or is it the U.S. Capitol Building? I'm not quite sure). I was prepared to write something about the bell but wouldn't you know it, I already did back in 2010 when I first visited London. Sorry folks, can't come up with anything better than this so you'll have to be satisfied with a rerun:
I was put up in the heart of the city, just off Trafalgar Square. The first thing I did on my own was visit the public square that the author of my guidebook criticized severely for its lack of architectural cohesiveness. Perhaps, but what a collection of treasures, The Church of St. Martin in the Fields (home to its eponymous orchestra), the Admiralty Arch, Nelson's Column, the National Portrait Gallery (who paid for my trip thank you very much), and the indescribable National Gallery. It was from that great museum's porch that I was struck with my first view of the bell tower of Westminster Palace, home of the Houses of Parliament.
Someone told me that in London, it's difficult to get one's bearings as the streets are so narrow and winding. But there it was, the city's most iconic landmark clear as day, big and beautiful, beckoning me, off in the distance, my first assumption to be shattered.
Within a few blocks of the tower, I heard the familiar chime of the three quarter hour, the Westminster Chimes. It was 12:45 and I knew that in 15 minutes I might have my one and only chance to hear Ben himself chiming the hour. One clang would be all that I would take home from that magnificent chunk of metal. The wait certainly was not time wasted. Big Ben has tolled on the hour virtually non-stop for nearly 150 years. It has been heard in person by millions, billions perhaps courtesy of the BBC. All the Queens and Kings of England since Victoria have heard it. It was heard daily by Disraeli, by Lloyd George, and by Churchill. More than likely it was heard by Sir John Herschel and Charles Darwin, by Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf . It was heard by Charlie Chaplin and the Beatles. During the Blitz of 1940, German bombs landed within feet of it destroying the House of Commons, but were unable to silence it. It rang throughout the war. All the words I read, all the images I ever saw, all the dreams of London I ever had were summed up in that one brief moment. I had finally arrived.
PRAGUE- The epitome of a city that suffers a bit from its sheer beauty, it's almost impossible to hear anyone speaking about visiting the magnificent Czech capital, without hearing complaints that it is overrun with tourists.
Once again I beat myself to it and wrote about an essential walking tour of Prague that starts at the Medieval entrance to the city, the Powder Tower, takes you through the Old City past the famous Astronomical Clock, in Old Town Square, over the River Vltava across the Charles Bridge, into in my opinion, the most beautiful section of the city, Mala Strana, then ends up at St. Vitus Cathedral in the heart of Prague Castle. This route is called the Royal Way as it was the official route the Bohemian kings made before their coronation in the Cathedral:
Along the route, one walks through not only a glorious city, but eleven centuries worth of history and architecture. Like Melbourne, Prague's architecture is an unapologetic clash of styles. Certainly, Prague is one of the most enchanting places imaginable with its fairy tale vistas featuring Medieval towers and bridges spanning the Vltava, the river that plays such an important role in Czech culture. Yet its physical beauty barely scratches the surface of the experience. Prague is the perfect walking city, as each few steps lead to a new discovery. You walk not only in the footsteps of kings, but also the likes of Kepler, Mozart, and Kafka. That's not to say its history is set in stone; like any vibrant place, its story is written daily by the people who walk its streets, from saints to sinners, and everyone in between.
Then lo and behold, I finished up that piece with a fine way to describe the theme of this piece:
Great cities are about life, past, present and future. Any city that invites people to explore by walking around its streets and alleys, discovering secrets hidden in its underbelly, is a treasure to behold. After all, the art of the city resides not only in its buildings, monuments or civic plans, but in the ways people interact with them. Take people away from the equation, and all that's left is a beautiful architectural rendering, or a dead city.
So, as your typical American visitor might say: "Maybe all them tourists ain't so bad."
Just a bit of a hint though, perhaps its best to visit Prague during off season or at off hours. Trust me, the tourists will still be there, just not so many of them, especially at the Clock and on the Charles Bridge.
SAN FRANCISCO- If there is an American city that comes close to the beauty of Prague, this is it. But in contrast, San Francisco owes at least as much of its beauty to its natural setting as its built environment. In addition to the glorious Bay and the Pacific Ocean inlet that lent its name to arguably the most beautiful bridge in the world, The Golden Gate, San Francisco has all those crazy hills that make walking around town a good workout for even someone who's in the best of shape.
And it's those hills that necessitated the invention of what is certainly the city's most iconic feature.
The story, perhaps apocryphal, goes something like this: Andrew Smith Hallidie, an entrepreneur who was involved in the manufacture of wire rope, witnessed a horrific accident involving a horse drawn streetcar trying to make its way up one of those hills. The weather was inclement, and the horses lost their traction on the road causing the whole contraption, horses and all, to slide down the hill, killing all the animals and an untold number of passengers and passersby. Hallidie resolved to alleviate the hazardous situation by creating a mechanical system to safely propel streetcars up and down those treacherous hills, based upon the system of hauling carts up and down mine shafts using you guessed it, wire rope.
Working with the German born engineer William Epplesheimer and several wise investors including Abner Doubleday, the man erroneously credited with inventing baseball, the fruit of their labor was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the world's first cable hauled railway, better known as the Cable Car System.
The basic concept is simple enough, propel the streetcars by wire running continuously underneath the streets. But the execution is anything but, especially if you want the cars to be able to start and to stop. Much of the brilliance of Epplesheimer's work involves the grip system operated by the driver who through the grip is able with the help of a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants the car to move, and release it when he needs it to come to a stop. Further complicating matters are when two cable car lines intersect, which necessitates tremendous effort on part of the driver (also known as the Grip) to briefly release grip on the cable, retract the mechanism to avoid it coming into contact with the intersecting cable, allow the momentum of the car to carry it beyond the intersecting cable, then reverse the process after safely clearing the interfering cable, to carry on.
Then there is the tremendous infrastructure required to run and maintain hundreds of miles of cable under the city's streets. Cable cars are the paradigm of audacious 19th Century industry and technology. For a while, they were incorporated into the transportation systems of several American cities including Chicago. They didn't last long however because of the tremendous effort and expense it took to keep them running.
Except in San Francisco.
Today you might still find locals riding the cable cars but the vast majority of passengers are tourists. Consequently, you might find yourself waiting in a queue for an hour or two to hop aboard one of these lovely 19th Century contraptions.
It's worth it.
Cable cars are a feast for at least four of the five senses:
- While walking on the streets you can feel the vibration of the cable running beneath your feet.
- From blocks away, you can hear each Grip driver's distinctive bell ringing style as they alert pedestrians and motorists of their presence.
- The burning odor of the Douglass Fir brakes (which have to be replaced every three days), is one of the most distinctive and evocative smells of the City by the Bay.
- I don't recommend trying to employ your sense of taste on the Cable Cars, save that for the Chioppino, which was also invented in San Francisco.
- The view from aboard the cable cars can't be beat, especially climbing Nob Hill with San Francisco Bay at your back, while hanging on for dear life, standing on a coveted spot on the outside running board. Frankly, this is one of the greatest urban experiences anyone can have, anywhere, especially at night, which also happens to be the time of day with the fewest tourists.
Another win-win.
PARIS- Speaking of audacious 19th Century technology... Naturally, Gustave Eiffel's Tower is a no-brainer on my list. Need I say more? Here is my ode to Paris from twelve years ago.
And here is another, this piece was devoted to the second most special of all the places on this list to me, written right after the fire that nearly destroyed it, Notre Dame de Paris. Given that, appropriately enough, the post begins with a personal account of the most special place on this list to me.
BERLIN - And this is my ode to Berlin. Here's an excerpt:
Cities contain both the best and the worst of humanity, the great cities only more so. This goes all the way back to Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, part of the cradle of civilization, center of art, law and science. But Babylon still has bad connotations to this day implying the degenerate behavior found in big cities.
The great cities of the world all have had their share of decadence, heartbreak and misery.
Of all the cities that I have visited, none has had to overcome more of all three in the course of one human lifetime than Berlin.
My wife and I are currently in the middle of watching the compelling German TV drama series Babylon Berlin. For the record I'd like to point out that the series started production in 2017 while my Berlin post was written in 2009, so my association of Babylon with Berlin in the post, and the movie's, are not related. Just thought you might like to know.
When I visited Berlin in 1994, the Berlin Wall had been down for only a few years, and there was still a stark contrast between what were once West and East Berlin. I'd be very interested to return today and see how the two cities have melded together into one.
One thing I'm certain that has not changed is you still cannot walk a few blocks in the city and not be reminded in one way or other of World War II and the Holocaust. That is by design, and I give the German people a great deal of credit for honestly confronting their past. We Americans can learn a great deal from that.
Despite being a great city filled with vibrant culture, a hopping nightlife, a diverse population, and virtually all the things that make a city alive and vital, there still is a cloud of melancholia that hangs over Berlin, which will probably be around for a good long time.
So after confronting places like the old headquarters of the Gestapo and its accompanying museum aptly called the Topography of Terror, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Hitler's Bunker, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, the old Reichstag Building whose 1933 torching, set in motion the sweeping suspension of civil liberties in Germany by the Hitler government, and the haunting Jewish Cemetery in Prenzlaurerburg which testified to the time when Berlin was the center of Jewish culture in Germany, what I really needed after a good cry, was a glass of beer.
Which I treated myself to every day I was in Berlin.
But not just anywhere.
If you've been watching Babylon Berlin, you may have noticed this recurring logo:
Ka De We, short for Kaufthaus des Westins, was, and continues to be, one of the grandest department stores in the world, right up there with Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris.
In addition to constant reminders of the War, practically everywhere you go in Berlin, are photographs on display of prewar Berlin, and what a place it must have been. The producers of Babylon Berlin have done a good job using CG to recreate the look and feel of the city of the twenties, which was bombed to kingdom come during the forties.
The Berlin of today gives one ample opportunity to put beside the past (without ever forgetting it), and look forward to the future. Yet a part of me still longed to visit the Berlin that existed before the horrors of the Nazis and World War II. Visiting Ka De We in the flesh, which was rebuilt to faithfully resemble its prewar self, fit the bill.
Shopping there might have been a little beyond my means, even with a per diem at my disposal, but having a beer while sitting in the sixth floor food hall with its splendid view of central Berlin including the Tiergarten, the Winged Victory Monument, the Brandenburg Gate and the city's main drag, Unter den Linden leading into what once was East Berlin, put me into a place where I could briefly forget the horror of what went on right outside that window, not so long ago.
But not completely. In that great German beer hall, I didn't drink just any beer, I drank exclusively Budweiser Budvar and Pilsner Urquell, Czech beers in honor of my father who spent much of the war as a conscripted laborer from Czechoslovakia in Berlin.
We do our part any way we can.
MEMPHIS- In terms of American popular music, most roads lead through Memphis.
Chicago may be known for its Blues scene, but most of the great Chicago Blues men and women came up from the Mississippi Delta through Memphis before moving north. Detroit is justifiably known as a capital of Soul Music, thanks in large part to Barry Gordy and his baby, Motown. But Memphis produced its own version of Soul through the Stax label (and others), less polished, more gritty, more down to earth, more raw and in the end I believe, more influential. My favorite line from the movie The Blues Brothers which despite being set in Chicago, featured mainly artists who were based in Memphis, came out the mouth of Donald "Duck" Dunn, the bassist for Booker T and the MGs who said this: "we had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline."
Indeed.
Here are just some of the names of the first group of great Memphis blues and soul musicians enshrined in the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012:
- Bobby Blue Bland
- Booker T. and the MGs
- Al Greene
- Isaac Hayes
- Howlin' Wolf
- W.C. Handy
- B.B. King
- Otis Redding
- The Staple Singers
- Rufus Thomas
And that's just for starters, the Queen of them all, Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, and recorded her greatest music down the road in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Then there's that other baby of the blues, rock and roll, which for all intents and purposes was born at Sun Records in Memphis.
Here's the story as told in Jim Jarmusch's 1988 film Mystery Train:
Then there's Graceland. Now I love Elvis as much as the next guy, but I'd have to put Graceland, home of Elvis Presley and without a doubt the biggest tourist attraction in town, on my bucket list list, having checked it off my own bucket list (before I knew there was such a thing) about 35 years ago. But it's not on this list. Maybe it's just me, but Graceland is just too damned depressing.
Maybe it's because the lights went out for good on the King in the seventies, the decade marked by the worst taste in design in the entire century. Graceland, preserved as it was the day Elvis died, reflects that. Maybe it's because he died in the bathroom upstairs and on our tour, as I'm sure most others, some smart aleck asked the tour guide if we could see the bathroom. Maybe it's because the tour ended in the garden which contains the graves of Elvis and his parents. Compounding that today is that the new residents of that private cemetery are to be Elvis's daughter Lisa Marie, who recently died at the age of 54, and her son Ben, who took his life at 27.
Graceland isn't the only downer in Memphis. The Lorraine Motel was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Anyone who was alive in 1968 and can remember that horrific event will no doubt feel a jolt coming upon the parking lot and facade of the motel which have been preserved to look as they did in that famous photograph taken on the afternoon of April 4,1968, of Dr. King laying mortally wounded on the balcony of his motel room while Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy and other associates of Dr. King, point in the direction of where the fatal shot came from. Even the cars parked in the lot are still there.
The National Civil Rights Museum now occupies the site behind the preserved facade of the motel. It was just about to open when I visited Memphis, so I haven't had the opportunity to visit. A friend confirmed that it was well worth visiting although Dr. King's room, complete with a reproduction of the plate of dinner he never got the chance to eat, was a bit macabre.
Like Berlin, Memphis is a great city with a lot going for it, including a vibrant contemporary music scene.
Also like Berlin, you may need a little relief, especially after visiting the Civil Rights Museum and/or Graceland.
Well friends, I have the answer for you, located right in the heart of downtown Memphis.
The Peabody is a classic early 20th Century hotel, built along the lines of the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. While it lacks the Fairmont's Tonga Room (another spot worthy of this list), in addition to its glorious roof-top sign, the Peabody has a feature I believe is completely its own:
The Peabody Ducks.
Two times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, a red carpet is rolled out for four female mallards and one very lucky male duck who are escorted with great fanfare by their Duck Master via elevator to and from their state-of-the-art rooftop penthouse, to hold court in the fountain of the hotel's elaborate lobby.
The ducks have been around since 1930 when the general manager of the hotel who got a little peppered on a hunting trip, decided as a lark that it would be a trip to bring some live decoy ducks to swim in the fountain of his hotel. Thinking the better of it after sleeping off his stupor, the next morning he went downstairs to find that the ducks were a big hit, and a tradition was born.
You can read all about the Peabody Ducks here in a magazine I never miss an issue of, Garden and Gun.
OK I promised you the ridiculous, now here's the sublime:
NEW ORLEANS - A little over a year ago I wrote a piece about American food culture, yes indeed there is such a thing. In the post tasked myself with coming up with what I would consider the quintessential American dish. I didn't even consider the obvious choices, the hamburger or the hot dog, or even that most unique of American meals, Thanksgiving Dinner.
Instead, I chose Gumbo. Let me explain:
A microcosm of the United States, but unique in so many ways, New Orleans like most major American cities, is a mix of people from all over the world. Specifically. the Crescent City is a mix of European, African, Latin, Carribean and Indigenous American cultures, with a little Asian thrown in for good measure.
And Gumbo is the dish that represents all the cultures found in Louisiana. As anyone who has made it knows, the heart and soul of Gumbo is the roux, a mixture of flour and fat that originated as its name implies, from France. From there the dish is thickened either with okra, a vegetable first cultivated in Africa, or file (pronounced "FEE lay"), ground sassafrass leaves, introduced by Native Americans. The hot seasoning comes from the settlers from the Spanish Canary Islands, and the andouille sausage from the Cajuns, via the French-speaking part of Canada.
Like Paella, Gumbo originated as a peasant stew, infinitely adaptable to whatever ingredients its maker has lying around the kitchen.
Also like Paella, everyone has his or her own recipe. As such, Gumbo has made its way onto the tables of homes and restaurants of Louisiana from the humblest to the swankiest.
Like America, coming from humble beginnings, Gumbo is infinitely diverse, and like Americans, it can be whatever it wants to be, good, bad, and everything in between.
It's a little easier to come up with the most American of art forms. That would have to be jazz, and as far as jazz music goes, all roads lead to New Orleans. Unlike Memphis, or just about anywhere you have to seek out the music, in New Orleans, music comes out of its pores. You can't help but hear it all over the French Quarter and other popular neighborhoods, either from street musicians or coming out of bars and other tourist venues.
But music is a part of everyday life as well in New Orleans. Of course, you hear it all over the city during the mother of all public festivals, Mardi Gras. I haven't been to Mardi Gras, nor do I intend to go because even I can't deal with THAT many folks all together in one place, at least not since I spent New Years Eve in Times Square. But while much of the city's economy depends on the tourists who show up for the festival, it would be a mistake to assume that Mardi Gras is an event put on for tourists. Rather, Mardi Gras the day, and Carnival which proceeds it, are deeply rooted in the culture of the city and almost every resident of the city takes part in the festival in one way or other.
However in a city that doesn't need much of an excuse to celebrate, you needn't show up during the period between Epiphany and Fat Tuesday to find a good party. While you're there, you might even be lucky enough to stumble across a Jazz funeral.
Unfortunately, we didn't get that chance but did manage to take part in the next best thing. It was the day after a wedding we attended and my friend who was the groom's best man, his wife, his parents and my wife at the time were looking for something to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He found a notice in the paper for a jazz parade in Algiers, the neighborhood across the Mississippi River from downtown. Those were the days before GPS so all we had to go on was an address and the kindness of strangers offering us directions. We stopped at the first place we could find off the ferry which was a bar. My friend went in and asked around where we could find the parade. The folks turned around, looked at our lily-white faces, just like theirs, and told us in no uncertain terms that we didn't want to go there. They didn't need to say why. But we assured them we did and by the way we were from Chicago and could handle ourselves. So they pointed us in the right direction and sent us on our way.
We brushed aside their trepidation, attributing it to good ol' boy racism, until black people began stopping us in the street asking us if we were lost. Unlike the guys in the bar, and very much unlike experiences I've had at home being in neighborhoods in which I did not feel welcome, to a person everyone who stopped us was very much concerned about our well being. One woman driving her car even turned around and drove to our destination just to see if what we were looking for was legit. She came back and assured us it was. I'm sure she would have driven us there herself had there not been six of us.
Anyway, when we got to the location, about half an hour after the scheduled start of the parade, there was no indication that anything was about to happen. Assuming we already missed it, we asked someone who didn't know about the event but told us: "Hey this is New Orleans, nothing ever starts on time here.
When the parade finally began about an hour later, it turned out to be the most wonderful, joyous, life-affirming event I ever attended. It seemed like half of the neighborhood came out of nowhere turning out for the parade which featured two local "crews" with their member musicians, dancers, friends and relatives. As I pointed out in a previous post, "It was the real deal, not the manufactured mayhem of Bourbon Street." Ours were the only white faces to be found, and I think it's safe to say we were probably the only tourists present. No one batted an eye.
As we walked back from the parade, we ran into many of the folks who expressed their concern for us on the way there. One woman was standing in front of her church and when we passed by, after exchanging pleasantries, she invited us in for the service. One of the biggest regrets of my life is that we politely declined.
But we were exhausted and actually had plans for later that evening, we were headed for Preservation Hall. You may wonder, why go to a venue that caters exclusively to tourists when we had just experienced the real thing?
The answer is simple, music is music and New Orleans music, wherever or whenever you hear it, is sublime, we just couldn't get enough of it. Like Memphis, I could write a list of all the great musicians that came out of New Orleans but I need only mention one to put the whole thing into perspective:
Louis Armstrong.
Not every visitor to New Orleans has the gumption to do what we did in seeking out that parade. I can honestly say that if it were not for my friend and his family, my ex-wife and I on our own probably would have heeded the advice of the locals and not continued walking in the direction of an event that at the time, seemed hit or miss at best.
But in the end, it was the kind of adventure that every seasoned traveler longs for, the off the beaten path encounter that takes effort, perseverance, and a little nerve to pull off, the kind of experience that might impress even the snootiest of your friends.
By contrast, the only perseverance required to attend a performance at Preservation Hall is to be willing to stand in line to get in. And if you're at all claustrophobic, sitting cheek by jowl with a crowd of sweaty tourists in a room that looks like it should have been shut down by the fire marshal years ago, may take a little nerve.
But let me assure you, the payoff was the same. It's all about the music.
Would I recommend going the extra mile to seek out a "real" New Orleans experience as we did that Sunday afternoon, or take the easy route and head to a venue that everyone in the world knows about?
That's easy, I'd recommend doing both as we did, and then do it again and if possible, again once more. As I write this it just dawned on me, that's what really separates this list from the bucket, been there done that list.
So, there you have it, a dozen or so places in the U.S. and Europe that you will definitely find in your guidebook, and one that you won't, that will hopefully move, thrill, excite and maybe even put a smile on your face, if you're anything like me. That last part is the key because you're probably not like me, and your list of worthwhile places to visit might be completely different from mine, which is exactly as it should be.
The point is that traveling, one of the great joys of life, is a highly personal thing, and you shouldn't ever feel compelled to visit, and more important, not visit a place in order to impress anyone other than yourself.
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