Ease on down

Whoa. Stand back.

Every French, Creole, Cajun, African, and Irish background of loving and respecting where you are from will lash out at you if you ask that question. This is home. Their home. And you don’t just walk away from the land you love when a little trouble strikes.

A little trouble? In 2005 Hurricane Katrina leveled the city and more than 80 percent of the city flooded. In August 2021, 16 years later, Hurricane Ida slammed into the region and caused more economic disaster than Katrina, in fact, the worst economic disaster in the area’s history. Even now, flying into Louis Armstrong International Airport (MSY) over the residential areas of Orleans Parish, the roofs of what appears to be 75 percent of the homes are blue—and that’s not a new roofing material, that’s tarp. Recovery has been slow here, but tired, frayed, and more than a little tattered, the city known for its love of music, food, and fun wants you back—and its residents are not going to let you see them flinch. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

The good times

Everything you’ve ever heard about New Orleans is true: The food is indescribable, the music is infectious, and the atmosphere promises fun and frivolity. In the famous French Quarter, you’ll find restaurants and bars on every street, each one more intriguing and beguiling than the next. Live music is everywhere no matter the time of day. Stop at Café Beignet on Bourbon Street for your sugar fix and café au lait and you’ll be serenaded by a jazz quartet. It’s 9 a.m. and yet everyone appears to be bedecked in gold and purple beads. In front of the St. Louis Cathedral, a raucous troupe of street entertainers are hilariously fleecing you of your $5 and $10 bills.

It’s loud, it’s chaotic, and it’s messy—watch your feet, the street cleaners are out soaping up the cobblestones. But as you near the river, the muddy, Big River, the pace slows and suddenly you’ve stepped back in time. A steamboat is streaming by on the Mississippi and somewhere, you swear, Paul Robeson is singing Ol’ Man River. Horses clip-clop along Decatur Street, cargo ships sound their horns as they prepare to leave the city, and saxophone music underscores the harmony of the majestic riverfront (also called the “Moonwalk”—not because of the King of Pop, but because of former Mayor Maurice “Moon” Landrieu’s rehabilitation of the riverfront in 1976).

You’ll come to this famous corner of the world for an experience like no other—old-world grace and charm, ethnic interpretations of fresh-off-the-boat seafood, and over-the-top expressions of living life large. However…

The bad times

New Orleans is not simply a silly face. It is a proud mother who has seen the worst and won’t let memories fade. It honors its past with monuments, statues, and structures that provide stark reminders of past glories as well as tragedies. Along the riverfront, er, Moonwalk, are sculptures memorializing the horrors of the Holocaust, a white marble sculpture of the Monument to the Immigrant, and a sculpture of a man and his grandson honoring the life of landscape designer Malcolm Woldenberg.

There is a statue of Joan of Arc on Decatur Street given to New Orleans by France, sculptures of musicians in Armstrong Park, and Andrew Jackson on his horse in Jackson Square, said to be the most photographed statue in New Orleans. The architecture of New Orleans and the city’s many cemeteries respect and honor the history of the area.

But the overwhelming, mind-blowing tribute to World War II, the National World War II Museum (formerly The National D-Day Museum), is a must to see. It may belie the idea of going to New Orleans for a bit of fun, because this interactive and amazingly landscaped museum does not flinch, either. It’s raw, and intense, and beautifully laid out. It’s also sprawling and no picnic if you’re not wearing your walking shoes.

From its massive concrete-slab edifice at its entrance, to its display of Higgins boats (the locally made amphibious crawlers in which Allied soldiers stormed the beaches at D-Day), to its dioramic depictions of the Pacific theater, and to its massive suspension of a Spitfire and Skytrain, the museum has a strong personality. It looks unflinchingly at the horrors of war, occupation, and liberation.

In the U.S. Freedom Pavilion, the who’s-who of aircraft includes a B–17 Flying Fortress, B–25J Mitchell, a TBF Avenger, a P–51 Mustang, an SBD-3 Dauntless, and Corsair F4U-4. The B–17 is My Gal Sal, which was lost over Greenland and recovered and restored years later. Oral histories in audio and video are hallmarks of the experience; participate in the “Dog Tag Experience” in which you adopt a real-life person of the time period to share their experiences throughout the war.

Fly in, stay for the food

I am sprawled across a brown pleather couch in Gerald Herbert’s hangar at Port of South Louisiana Executive Regional Airport (APS), a mouthful of a name for this small country airfield in southwest Louisiana, about 35 miles from New Orleans. Herbert is a photographer for The Associated Press, native of Louisiana, and owner of a 1976 Cessna 172M, nicknamed “the Love Bug.” His hangar is the epitome of what a New Orleans jazz lover should have: these ridiculously comfortable couches, a fully stocked bar, and a snazzy stereo system blaring Coltrane.

“I wanted the hangar to be a place for my friends and family to hang out while I preflighted the airplane or for after we come back from flying,” he says, his slight southern accent occasionally breaking through. He’s lived all over the world, yet he came back home to learn to fly, to find love, and eat his mother’s crawfish etouffee. “The whole reason I learned to fly was because I fell in love with a girl from Shreveport. I got so many speeding tickets, I eventually had to buy a plane and learn to fly. I put a thousand hours going back and forth to Shreveport—and scored a lot of boyfriend points—in this plane.” He and now-wife Lucy christened the Cessna with its nickname.

“Flying southern Louisiana is incredibly beautiful. Over the swamps you’ll see flocks of egrets; over the Gulf, schools of dolphins; over the plantations, man that’s just eye candy,” he says. “Every place has its own beauty but here the sky is just magic.”

It’s the natural beauty of the area that draws pilots like Herbert and Southern Seaplanes owner Lyle Panepinto, whose business is over in Belle Chasse. Both remark on the cypress trees and the swamp.

“I love the cypress trees,” says Panepinto. “It’s like a mini Amazon.” (Look for a story on Southern Seaplanes in an upcoming issue of AOPA Pilot magazine.) His favorite flying destination is the Chandeleur Islands, the easternmost point of Louisiana, uninhabited barrier islands where he can set down his seaplane and fish for native Redfish, bass, and speckled trout.

And while these two native sons are both fiercely loyal to their homes, they do admit to one thing: It is the food that seals the deal. “We’ve got these big fat gulf shrimp, crabs, crawfish. I can bring home shrimp, put on the boil, and we have them for appetizers but then are too full for dinner,” says Herbert. “If you’re coming down here, I recommend you fast for a whole week before you come.”

“I’ve been all over and there are few places that can compare to our fresh food,” says Panepinto. “The food just ain’t the same anywhere else.”

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