A tall black saxophonist in a purple velvet jacket and matching hat is serenading the customers crowding the Cafe du Monde. There is, in American-speak, a "line" for incomparable cafe au lait and hot sugared beignets (a kind of chewy doughnut) at the 24 hour historic cafe (it first opened in 1862). The busker interrupts his performance every so often to alert the sleepy Sunday morning customers that a table has become vacant: "Tay-ble!" It is November and the weather is bright and snappy: just warm enough to sit in the outdoor but roofed-in cafe if you are wearing a warm jacket. This is a good time to visit New Orleans, as the summers are too hot and steamy for comfort.
Mardi Gras in February is apparently manic but wonderful - that is, if you can find a viewing point from well above the cavalcade of masked revellers. There are masks a-plenty in the shops for those who are already planning their costumes, wonderful feathered and sequined affairs, some with beaks and noses, a real bargain at three for $10.
It seems there are always plenty of revellers in the city - "laissez le bon temps roulez" is the local catchcry - and this time of year is no exception. Evening on Bourbon Street sees dazed tourists sucking on daquiris "to go", smells of hot fried food fill the air, and there are street performers galore. There is a different blare of music from every second bar (rock, jazz, blues, Cajun and its near cousin, zydeco), and as early as 5.30 p.m. people are dancing in the dark, pulsing caverns. Strip-joints abound, outside which sassy young women hold up signs reading "topless girls"; "bottomless girls". A mannequin in a skimpy red dress looks down from a balcony at Chris Owens's establishment.
We are in the French Quarter, distinctive for its colourful two-storey houses, each with decorative wrought iron balconies painted black or green (the city was founded by the French in 1718, but the architecture apparently dates from Spanish rule later in the century). On every balcony there is a forest of potted greenery, and the courtyard gardens offer sub-tropical glimpses of banana trees.
Food is central to the New Orleans experience. We start at the Acme Oyster House, one of the city's older eateries, for "oysters on the half shell" (the best I've ever eaten, with apologies to Clarenbridge). The atmosphere is hectic. Yet again, there is a continuous "line", and the waiters keep spirits up by leading sing-a-longs and cracking jokes. I am urged to try all sorts of New Orleans specialities, like gumbo, crawfish tails, shrimp po-boys and enormous muffalita sandwiches (stuffed with ham, cheese and olive sauce). Almost everything - even corn on the cob - is laced with enough spicy Cajun seasoning to blow your socks off. Space must be saved for bread and butter pudding with rum sauce, another New Orleans speciality.
Other excellent restaurants in the city include Copelands (modern and informal, they do excellent Louisiana crab cakes) on St Charles Avenue, a short distance from the Quarter; and The Upperline (old-fashioned and more formal, where you have to try the "original" fried green tomato with shrimp remoulade). As for jazz, there are many different moods, depending where you go, even on a Monday night, which is our only chance to sample the choices. We start at the Crescent City Brewhouse on Decatur Street where you can eat seafood and drink their range of "handcrafted" beers while listening to mellow progressive jazz. I order a pleasant wheat lager with "a banana turn". We are lucky enough to catch a marvellous impromptu session of Dixieland jazz at the cosy and unpretentious Fritzel's on Bourbon Street. The ad hoc group is joined briefly by the fattest man I have ever seen - big Al Carson - whose voice is rich and magnificent. We then listen to piano jazz and a throaty Louis Armstrong sound-a-like (whose home town this was) at Lafitte's, an old and wonderfully shabby former blacksmith's shop, with its shutters hanging off their hinges. The smoky, intimate interior is lit with wavering candles. Although closed on Monday nights, the best place to go for veteran jazz musicians is Preservation Hall on St Peter Street.
On the same street we find the voodoo shop still open, offering a mixture of icons and fertility symbols, potions, statues and medallions. There is a shrine to Marie Leveau - the deceased voodoo queen - featuring a portrait where her grey hair stands up in snakes' heads. The inclusive shrine sports a crucifix alongside chickens' feet and alligator heads. Voodoo, which came with the slaves from Africa, is still practised in the city.
New Orleans has been a magnet for writers, whom, as Lafcadio Hearn noted, have tended to let their literary zeal be swamped in the good-time, hard-drinking atmosphere of the place. We saunter past the corner where William Faulkner soaked in bourbon and tossed orange peel at passersby from his balcony apartment on Pirate's Alley.
Best of all, the house where Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire survives, complete with the balcony where Stella stands when Stanley Kowalski yells her name lustily from the street below. There is a "Stella Hollering Competition", where would-be swains try to outdo Marlon Brando, at the Tennessee Williams Festival in March.
I am charmed to discover that Desire is actually a street in New Orleans; other fanciful street names include Elysian Fields and Eurydice. As for streetcars, you can still ride the old-fashioned trolleys all over the city, and the streetcar to St Charles Avenue (cost: $1) is well worth taking. The trolley will take you as far as the Loyola and Tulane campuses, and you can walk back down the Avenue enjoying the Garden District, with its mature trees (including pecan, live oak and southern magnolia) and the wonderful old houses, magnificent white and blue clapboard affairs with porches, turrets and stained glass (there are also some ostentatious wedding-cake neoclassical monstrosities).
Back in the Quarter, if the noise and bustle is too much, take a saunter through Jackson Park and sit beside the Mississippi to watch the sun set. There are picturesque oldtime boats moored at the river's edge - some are stationary casinos; others will take you on tours of the river, where, upstream, you can see the elegant antebellum mansions of the old sugar plantation owners, as well as a few slave cabins.
Interestingly enough, it was immigrants fleeing the Famine in Ireland who ended up in the thriving port of New Orleans, and quickly got work digging the city's channels, as slave-owners reckoned their slaves were too valuable to do such heavy labour (many of the unfortunate Irish were carried off by an epidemic of yellow fever in 1853). There are several Irish pubs in the city, one called, appropiately O'Flatherty's Irish Channel Pub on Toulouse Street, and one called Haggerty's (the city has a thriving gay and transvestite subculture).
A day trip possibility outside the city is an outing to the Cajun wetlands, where French patois is still spoken. Boat trips on the marshy bayou yield vistas of huge trees bearded with Spanish moss, grey-blue Louisiana herons, egrets, and of course, 'gators posing as logs.
So, if you're off now to book your flight, drop that Irish pronunciation, It is not "Nyou Orleeeens", but "Noo Oarlins". And if you want to sound really cool, just say you're headed for the Big Easy.