My daughter had a friend from out of state visiting this week, so we did one of those tourist-in-your-hometown things.
It's always a chance to delight in sights, sounds and smells one might otherwise overlook or ignore in the busy day-to-day.
There was a fresh twist to this familiar process this week: It was the first time I've introduced New Orleans to a child – or whatever it is you call a 13-year-old these days.
Certainly not an adult. So certainly no Bourbon Street. Heck, not even Frenchmen Street.
It was more of a Jackson Square, French Market, Riverfront sort of affair, and it was an affirmation of what tourism officials keep telling us: This town is positively jumping.
Everywhere is always crowded. And that's a good thing.
Cafe du Monde is the toughest seat in town.
On a random weekday afternoon, there were more than 400 people on a Steamboat Natchez sightseeing cruise, at $25 a ticket – not including meals or drinks.
You do the math; that's more than $10,000 changing hands on a two-hour tour.
A two-hour tour.
At the Jamie Hayes Gallery on Chartres Street, the aisles were shoulder-to-shoulder, the cash register ringing non-stop; it's great to see payoff come to a guy who has hustled for decades here in New Orleans to establish himself.
Dollar bills overflowed from the cardboard boxes and guitar cases of street singers, mimes and break dancers.
Speaking of Frenchmen Street, any denizen will tell you: There's too many people there now. The businesses are too full.
Nice problem for the businesses to have.
Nice problem for the city to have.
This month, Travel + Leisure Magazine named New Orleans the No. 1 shopping destination in America, besting such established – and perhaps staid and overly upscale – retail meccas as New York and Chicago.
This town is on a roll and shows no sign of the old summer slowdown.
Essence Fest will fill every hotel room in the city early next month; the Lutheran Church is bringing 35,000 souls to town a week after that.
And on and on.
The traditional dead zone of summer is itself dead, a relic of the past, due to New Orleans consistently rave reviews during our Big Events – Final Four, BCS, etc. – and the indisputably superior work of our tourism and convention offices.
It's the same story, night after night: There's no room at the Inn.
And unless you're the Baby Jesus, that's nothing but good news.
