Tara in Gone With The Wind was modelled on Houmas House in New Orleans (Photo by Richard Burnett) |
I blew into New Orleans with my buddy Bicente two days before Halloween 2008 and scared the bejezus out of the Big Sleazy on our absinthe-laced boozy first night there when I tripped and fell on Bourbon Street, then slid face first into a gutter next to a policewoman on her horse.
It reminded me of the famous Oscar Wilde quote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Except I now know the stars look brightest from the gutter.
Bugs morphed into Starlet O'Hara
at Houmas House
|
Still, on this, my third trip to N’Awlins – a city founded in 1718 by the former French governor of Louisiana, Jean-Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, who was born in Montreal in 1680 – I regaled friends old and new in a city that has won my heart.