I’m going to New Orleans this May with some girlfriends from high school. We’re staying downtown and I’m hoping that our time there includes lots of walking, pastries, and photo-ops.
After I booked my flight earlier this week, I started thinking about my only other visit to New Orleans in January 2005. It was my senior year of college, and my friend Brynn and I rented an apartment in the Bywater neighborhood, which we found via Craigslist. Every day that week we walked or took the bus to and from the French Quarter, downtown, and the Garden district. It was an amazing trip.
About eight months later, Katrina hit and since then both Brynn and I have wondered about the fate of Bywater and whether the house we stayed at still stands. I’m sort of embarrassed to say that up until a couple days ago, I didn’t do much beyond wondering. In preparing to return to NOLA, I decided to do the obvious and googled Bywater. Good news: the floods pretty much avoided the neighborhood.
After learning this and seeing some signsof Bywater’s continued revitalization, I started searching for our house. A little background: all the trip planning for my 2005 NOLA visit was done via my college email account so unfortunately, I lost the owner’s contact information as well as the address of the property. I honestly thought it was more likely I’d never find the house or owner again than not.
I decided to try a Flickr search, and the first photo I found was this one(sorry, the photographer won’t let me post it here so click on it). I noticed the the street signs for Dauphine and Mazant, and they sounded familiar. I figured I was just remembering major thoroughfares thugh and clicked to another. That house, with all the smoke behind it, it was the one Brynn and I rented.
Incredible, right?
After that, I was able to find another ad on Craigslist, this one posted on March 1, proclaiming the house available for NOLA visitors. I felt a tremendous amount of relief reading through the ad, and then some good old-fashioned happiness. I know most post-Katrina New Orleans stories are not relieving or happy or anything but depressing, and I’m thankful that this small search turned up something good.
Maybe my trip this May will bring more.
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rebecca - remind me to talk to you about new orleans when you come to dinner this week, we were there this time last year and did some pretty amazing things.