Quebec City's Ice Hotel is a thing of beauty. (Julia Pelish photo)

[First published on Vacay.ca]

QUEBEC CITY — Even though Tori Woods and Crystal Chisholm are hopping around in skimpy bikinis, their boots are what catch the eye. The two good friends from Uxbridge, Ontario can bear the cold on every part of their bodies except, it seems, for the soles of their feet. Everyone has a limit, and a night in the Hotel de Glace will test it.

Woods arrived at the wonder of a hotel a day removed from a week-long trip to Jamaica. Going from one extreme to another only delights her. She and Chisholm both grin at the thought of doing something most people might only attempt on a dare or during a bout of insanity. The Hotel de Glace, or Ice Hotel, is a 15-minute drive from Quebec’s old city and a world away from normal. It’s made entirely of snow (15,000 tonnes of it) and ice (500 tonnes) and features a 6,000-pound chandelier that glows blue like something out of the Fortress of Solitude.

In its 12^th year, the Hotel de Glace is that most unusual of travel destinations. In a country where most of us can’t wait to get away from the cold, this temple to ice draws people fascinated to see how cool life below-zero can be. The beauty of the hotel is astonishing. It’s the kind of thing Tolkien would dream up. Columns of thick, clear ice decorated with First Nations carvings vault from the floor. Snow sculptures, some featuring figures in athletic poses, stick to the walls in a way that seems to defy gravity.

This year, it took six weeks to erect the hotel, which includes a chapel (24 weddings are scheduled) and an ice bar (the Nordique, a drink made of vodka and Blue Curacao, is the most popular). There are 36 rooms and suites, some of which feature fireplaces that are insulated so no heat escapes to threaten the structure of the building — or, sadly, to warm the guests. Those fireplaces are perhaps the cruelest decorations ever invented. Within walls where the temperature averages minus-5 Celsius degrees, any opportunity for heat is coveted after a while.

Even Woods and Chisholm, the two adventuresome women in bathing suits, eventually don toques, scarves and gloves, and soon enough they get out of the cold entirely. After posing for photos in their bikinis and snow boots for 15 minutes, they scoot off to the hot tub; overnight guests are advised to sink into hot water before going to bed.

“It warms up the body,” says Maryline Borgia, a guide who instructs visitors on how to get through the night in the frigid conditions. She says she has seen a 90-year-old woman sleep in the hotel, as well as an expectant mother who was eight months’ pregnant. “We get all kinds of people. The Ice Hotel is one of those things you have to do once in your lifetime.”

Once might be the operative word.

Staying in the Hotel de Glace is not comfortable. Even after you’re curled into a toasty, hotel-issued sleeping bag, your face remains bare to the cold. The night air nips at your cheeks and nose, a constant menace you can’t get rid of unless you bandage your entire face. When sleep does come for me, it’s broken more than once by the need to breathe through the scarf wrapped over my nose and eyes. I tear away the cloth, huff for a while and then cover my nose again so I can escape into a dream.

Your boots and winter outerwear are placed in the waterproof bag from which you remove your sleeping bag. All other belongings are to be left in a storage locker in the adjacent heated building called the Celsius pavilion. If left on a shelf in the bedroom, items such as watches and jewelry can freeze into place overnight. There’s no washroom in the hotel rooms. Anyone who must use the facilities, must go through the arduous routine of getting out of the sleeping bag, getting into their clothes and boots, and scurrying to the Celsius, where breakfast is served, and showers and toilets are available.

“If you have to go to the washroom, you have no choice,” says Borgia, while instructing visitors after demonstrating how to get into a sleeping bag. “You make sure you go before.”

Despite the extreme discomfort, the ice hotel has plenty of thrill-seeking visitors, and lots of fans from around the world. Jackie Cano arrives on a cold Friday night to fulfill an eight-year-long dream to trek from her home in Mexico City to stand within this sight. “I’ve seen it in travel magazines and on the Discovery Channel,” she says. “It looks so beautiful.”

Cano doesn’t stay the night, even though she wants to. The rooms, which cost $199 per night per person, are all booked. The hotel is only open this year from January 6 to March 25, and the rooms fill up quick. Once the hotel shuts down, the structure and all of the beautiful artwork created for it melts.

Chisholm bought Woods the night’s stay as a Christmas present because neither of them had done anything like it before and, as Woods says, it’s good to explore the travel opportunities your home nation has to offer.

“I’ve always wanted to see more of Canada. This is a unique experience you can’t get anywhere else and we travel all over the world and it’s kind of nice to see what Canada has to offer,” she says, while cozy in the Celsius’s lounge, a couple of hours before she ventures into her room and the ice bed that awaits.

In the morning, her sunny disposition hasn’t changed. “It was a blast,” she says.

As extreme as the Hotel de Glace may be, it isn’t so much of a challenge. A cheerful attitude and determined spirit will conquer it easy, Woods and Chisholm prove.

The Tornado ride will keep you coming back for more. (Julia Pelish photo)

[First published on Vacay.ca]

QUEBEC CITY — Steve Bundy loads into the inner tube alongside me and a half-dozen others. We’re at the top of a hill overlooking the Quebec Carnival site that’s filled with children who you’d think would be the ones lined up to make this descent. Our tube, called a Tornade (or Tornado), is occupied with adults, however; and none of us seem like the thrill-ride type.

Behind us, a worker asks if we’re ready. “Let’s go,” someone in the tube says and upon those words the worker shoves us over the edge. Immediately, we’re spinning down the slope, screaming all the way.

The Tornado is a howl, a ticklish ride that lasts about 20 seconds. It twirls seven or eight times before reaching the bottom of the slope. When the craft slides to a stop, Bundy declares, “That was awesome.” It’s his first time to the annual winter celebration, but Bundy, who has relocated from Newfoundland to Quebec’s capital, is certain it won’t be his last. “I’ll be here every year,” he says.

Just like that, the Quebec Carnival has done what it so often has during its 58 years: win over its visitors who have helped make it the world’s biggest winter festival.

Rides like Snow Rafting, which involves a rubber tube plummeting down the same hill as the Tornado, and the Ice Slide, where visitors scoot through a track while seated on a sled, are most popular with adults. I’ve been to Disneyworld and Universal Studios and Toronto’s CNE many times, but I hadn’t felt like a kid again until this past weekend, when the ride on the Tornado made me eager to get right back in line and do that again. It occurred to me then that the carnival succeeds because it delivers what it promises: fun — and then some. And it does so by retaining the authenticity of a Canadian winter.

So many of us remember trudging up a hill with our toboggans or sleds, clothed in constraining snowsuits and with noses oozing with gunk, eventually wiped away with a glove or sleeve. We zipped down the slope, fell over, picked ourselves up and repeated the routine over and over until we were wiped. Truth is, a snowy hill and the gumption to go down it are all that’s necessary to have fun in winter. The organizers of the Quebec Carnival seem cognizant of that phenomenon.

Around the festival site, the hills are just as populated as the Ferris wheel line and fabricated snow village where entertainers take to the stage and marching bands parade through. At night, DJs and fire dancers delight Carnival-goers, who clamour to get into the Ice Castle, which is made of 7,000 blocks of ice, each weighing 75 pounds, and turns into a discotheque with the capacity to hold 225 people when the sun goes down.

“They know how to do winter right here,” says Sherry Khalid, who was visiting from Toronto on the Carnival’s opening weekend. “We wanted to experience winter like this.”

She and her friend, Sakina Raza, marvelled at the atmosphere. “We don’t get snow like this in Toronto. This is why we came. It’s beautiful to see,” Raza says.

When it was founded, the non-profit Carnival was meant to deliver an economic boost to the city’s businesses that endured weeks of depressed sales after Christmas. It also had a religious component that’s been largely forgotten. Like Mardi Gras and Rio’s Carnival, the Quebec event is a festival before Lent, the Christian holiday that involves fasting and spiritual observance. These days the only thing resembling religion occurs when Bonhomme, the festival’s touchy-feely mascot, appears, and children and adults flock to him to show their adoration. Bonhomme, a seven-foot snowman with a perpetual wide grin, is so popular he’s the most recognized public figure in Canada, according to Carnival statistics. When he enters a room, the crowd breaks into song, chanting his “Salut Bonhomme” theme song. If the gesture wasn’t so endearing, you would think it cultish. “When you see Bonhomme, it just makes you feel like a child again,” says one of the Quebec-born attendees, indicating the warm feelings the character engenders among those in the province.

Bonhomme is crucial to the success of the Carnival. He embodies the attitude that state of mind can overcome the bitterness of the cold. Even when the weather becomes fierce, the people of the city take it in stride. A blizzard on Friday forced the postponement of the opening night festivities, but there were few complaints. And, as time has gone on, the weather has generally been more conducive to keeping people outside, says Daniel Bouchard, the Carnival’s operations manager for 21 years. In fact, Bouchard’s team now must make artificial snow in January “because we can’t count on the weather.” He says the most significant change he has seen in the past two decades is the increasing warmth and unpredictability of the climate. “In the past four days alone, we have seen all the different kinds of weather Quebec can have: rain, wind, sun and a snowstorm,” he points out.

The Carnival, which features more than 1,500 volunteers, runs until February 12 this year and more than 700,000 people are expected to show up from around the world. As with Bundy and others, the merriment is sure to convince numerous attendees to come back.

“When we see the smile on people’s faces,” say Bouchard, “that’s my pay.”

MORE ABOUT THE 2012 QUEBEC CARNIVAL
Admission: Entry to the Carnival is $13 and includes admission to the Plains of Abraham site and access to a number of the activities and events. Some activities, including the rides, may require additional costs.
Dates: The Carnival runs for three consecutive weekends beginning January 27 to February 12. The final weekend is traditionally the most lively with wrap-up parties, championship events and headline entertainers.
Location: The Plains of Abraham, or Battlefields Park, is just outside of the walls of Quebec’s fortified old city. The main entrance is along the city’s main street, Grand Allee.
Where to eat: There’s an on-site bistro that gets very crowded, but the food is good and reasonably priced for festival fare. Otherwise, try one of the many outstanding restaurants in Quebec City. I recommend Café de la Paix, Le Marie Clarisse and, if you’re looking to splurge, the outstanding Laurie-Raphael.
Where to drink: Make sure to stop in at Le Pape Georges, a bar in Old Quebec that’s housed in one of the oldest buildings in Canada.
What to wear: Temperatures can routinely drop below minus-10 Celsius degrees and it’s not uncommon to see minus-20 Celsius on the thermometer. Dress in layers, with long thermal underwear, double pairs of socks and waterproof boots. Make sure you have a hat, warm gloves and a scarf. Snow pants offer additional protection. Have a thick, durable winter coat.
Economic impact: The Quebec Carnival generates more than $30 million in GDP and supports more than 600 jobs, according to organizers.
Website: www.carnaval.qc.ca/en

Safari ranger Brett DuBois inspired an award-winning story. (Julia Pelish photo)

When I met Brett DuBois, I knew I had a good story, and a potentially great one. DuBois is a safari ranger in South Africa who lives with passion for his work and the animals surrounding him. He’s intense, tough and fearless, and showed me that the wild animals aren’t the only fascinating beings you encounter on a safari. DuBois, who I met during a visit to the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve in Greater Kruger Park, became the focus of a story that appeared on the cover of the Toronto Star’s January 8, 2011 issue. On Tuesday, that story won the top award for Best International Article in a Newspaper with a Circulation of 250,000 or More from the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA).

You can find a link to it here on this website and here on the Star’s website.

I also won third prize in the same category for an article on Curacao, a Dutch island in the Caribbean that attained its own government on October 10, 2010, shortly before my article was published in the Star. Curacao is a fun place, full of passionate people who care about their island and its uniqueness. I’m glad I was able to spotlight it.

Lastly, NATJA voters awarded me and my good friend Jim Byers, the Star’s Travel Editor, with the Gold award for “Best Travel Series in a Newspaper” for our “Grand Tour” series that sent him and I to destinations around the globe in an insanely short amount of time. We covered 10 of the world’s most iconic cities, with Jim writing on 6 of them and me on 4. Here are the links to my articles in the series: Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, St. Petersburg and Cape Town.

Also, I’m proud to say that Julia Pelish, my wife and perpetual photographer/videographer, won a Bronze award in the “Best Cover Photo, Illustration” category for her stunning picture of a thunderstorm in Aruba. You can see that photo on her website.

Thanks to the voters for singling out my stories for the second year in a row. Much appreciated and greatly honoured.

Click on the links below to hear Excerpts 3 and 4 from the novel, which were read on CJSF Radio (90.1 FM) in Vancouver last week. There’s a 10-minute interview with me that runs before the storytelling begins.

Click here for Excerpt 3, continuation of Chapter 2 (following interview)
Click here for Excerpt 4, also a continuation of Chapter 2

Chapter 1 and the first half of Chapter 2 are available here:

Click here for Part 1, Chapter 1 (following interview).
Click here for Part 2, start of Chapter 2.

The burgers at Archie Manning's restaurant feature his uniform number and those of his sons.

A restaurant in New Orleans bearing the Manning name was going to pack the house no matter what. Archie Manning’s a classy guy, though, so you could expect that he would deliver an establishment with style and sophistication. At Manning’s, you’ll find a big, airy sports bar that has plenty of hospitality and enough warmth to make it appeal to women too.

The newly opened restaurant in the Big Easy’s trendy Warehouse Arts District features a large patio, which will host live music, as well as a banquet hall and 300 televisions, including a dominating 13.5-foot-by-7-foot screen that will catch the eye of anyone passing by. The menu from chef Anthony Spizale includes well-known southern favourites like Shrimp Po Boy sandwiches and Gumbo, along with some eccentric choices (Pig Skin Sliders and Alligator Sliders) that might surprise tourists.

“I’m real excited about it,” Archie Manning told me on Thursday, a night after the 210-seat restaurant held a grand opening celebration at its 519 Fulton Street location. “I’ve been on the road a lot and this business will help me stay closer to home.”

Manning, the former quarterback for the Saints, lives in the city’s Garden District (his home is on the walking tour of the posh neighbourhood) and is one of the most popular figures in New Orleans. He was walking around the restaurant on Thursday taking photographs with all of the guests and smiling wide inside his new digs. He had the idea for the restaurant about five years ago and opened it in time for this weekend’s NFL playoff games, which included his youngest son, Eli, quarterbacking the New York Giants to victory over the San Francisco 49ers. They will play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI on February 5 in Indianapolis, on the field where Peyton Manning, Archie’s other quarterback son, has led the Colts.

The Shrimp Po Boy is one of the southern faves on the Manning's menu.

The dinner menu at Manning’s has a No. 8 Burger that bears its owner’s uniform number. The lunch menu features the No. 18 and No. 10 Burgers, using the uniform numbers of Peyton and Eli, respectively. There’s also a No. 14 Burger in honour of Cooper, the one son who never reached the pros.

“I haven’t tried the burgers yet, but I hear they’re pretty good,” said Archie Manning, who partnered with casino giant Harrah’s in the venture. “I like the Gumbo a lot. The Simply Grilled Fish is real good, the two steaks are excellent.”

I tried the Gumbo ($8) and it was delicious, with andouille sausage and chicken, and in a broth that wasn’t too thick. The Shrimp Po Boy ($13) was okay, nothing special, but you do get lots of shrimp. The Spinach Salad ($9) was fresh and tasty, served with bacon. Manning’s offers a lengthy wine list and a beer list with several local craft brews.

There’s competition in the area, with Gordon Biersch, an excellent microbrewery restaurant, and the popular Ernst Café both close to Manning’s. With Archie’s name, though, and with the quality of the food, ambience and service, Manning’s is going to be a winner.

Come Super Bowl party time, you can bet it will also be packed with a lot of Giants backers rooting for the owner’s kid.

Manning's is sure to draw a crowd come Super Bowl Sunday. (Julia Pelish photos)

The All That Jazz is a thing of legend in New Orleans. (Julia Pelish photo)

NEW ORLEANS, LOUSIANA — Two days before I arrive in New Orleans, I receive an email urging me to go to a convenience store for “the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.” When you travel, words like that always grab your interest, even more so when you’re a travel writer and you sense the potential for a story. Still, you have to remain skeptical about such claims. The email was written from a contact who went to university in New Orleans and was now at Berkeley, so it’s more than possible he was a victim of a hallucination. So when I arrived, I asked around town.

“The All That Jazz — delicious,” said Nick Ruggiero, a waiter who moved from Washington, D.C. to the Big Easy about six years ago. “It’s awesome. Gooey, cheesy. You’ll love it.”

Ruggiero knows his stuff. He works at Arnaud’s, one of the city’s finer restaurants, and recommended particular dishes around town. He was the third person to verify that the All That Jazz sandwich at the Verti-Marte was, indeed, deserving of the hype.

“You’re getting the All That Jazz,” said a fourth endorser, who happened to be the nephew of former Raptors forward Sherell Ford. He was standing in line with me at the little 24-hour grocery store in the French Quarter and his eyes lit up when he spoke about the sandwich. “That’s delicious. It’s messy, but amazing.”

The Verti-Marte is across from the La Laurie Mansion, Nicolas Cage’s former home known for its gruesome 19^th-century murders and mutilations, and its reputed ghosts. For all of the visitors who come to this town fascinated by its spooky history, the store’s location may be the only thing notable about it. Inside, it looks like your typical U.S. mini-market, with overpriced snack foods, a freezer full of ice cream, long refrigerators stocked with soft drinks, milk and beer, and a cash register that guards the liquor and cigarettes behind it. At the rear, though, is a deli that churns out dozens of items, ranging from rich desserts like bread pudding to entrees like Creole Chicken and, of course, its po-boy sandwiches, of which the $10.25 All That Jazz is the most popular.

“We’ll serve 20 of those a day, sometimes a hundred,” says Ken behind the counter after he takes my order at 11 p.m. “We normally get a lot of people coming in here at four in the morning after all of the drinking and they’re looking for that sandwich.”

The Verti-Marte is across the street from the infamous La Laurie Mansion. (Julia Pelish photo)

While the All That Jazz may be a good hangover cure, you really should enjoy it sober. The ingredients include sautéed shrimp, turkey, ham, cheese and the Verti-Marte’s special “Wow” sauce, which Ken says is “kind of like a tartar sauce.” The sandwich is as advertised: delicious, satisfying and not as messy as I expected. It’s a foot long and comes on soft French bread. Sliced in half, you can take a portion with you for later, which I’d recommend, because eating it all at once may be impossible for anyone who’s not a football player. It may not be the best sandwich I’ve ever had (the finger sandwiches at Zum Schwarzen Kameel in Vienna are pretty fine), but it’s definitely in the top five. The flavours blend perfectly, one doesn’t stand out from the other, and you still get the taste of the turkey, ham and shrimp.

“It’s been served from the beginning,” Ken says of the sandwich. The Verti-Marte has had it on the menu for about four decades and its popularity continued even after the store had to close for several months following a May 2010 fire.

In one of those ironies that you encounter so often around New Orleans, Ken has never eaten the All That Jazz. Turns out, the guy who serves up dozens of these local favourites a day is a vegetarian.

NOTE: The Verti-Marte is at 1201 Royal Street and it delivers (504-525-4767).

Delta and other U.S. airlines have a bad rep with consumers for a reason.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — “If I can get people on a plane and moving, that’s what I’m going to do,” Andrew Martin said shortly after doing the completely unexpected: Booking me a first-class ticket to New Orleans when no one else at Delta Airlines would do any more than place me on standby for a possible coach seat sometime in the next two days. This even though it was a system error that caused me to miss my initial departure. Under such conditions, airlines or ticketing agencies must get their customers to their final destination on confirmed flights, not standby. But no one at Delta’s reservations center would acknowledge an error on their part, trying to blame it on Hotwire, the third-party agent with whom I had booked my flight. Hotwire, in turn, was adamant Delta was at fault for the failure to notify me that a 1:30 p.m. flight had been rescheduled to 1:12 p.m. It was an episode that showed how consumers can get stuck in a pass-the-buck game that causes expense and frustration.

Martin, though, showed class and reason, and saved Delta’s reputation in my eyes. He is a Delta supervisor at Buffalo Niagara International Airport and his efforts, along with the diligence of customer service rep Mari Ainsley, got me into New Orleans on the same day and without any extra fees tacked on.

However, there are other issues that Delta, or consumer advocates, need to address. After driving through the gut-churning blizzard that smacked southern Ontario and upstate New York on Friday the 13th, I arrived at the Delta counter at 12:50 p.m. for the 1:30 p.m. flight I had booked in October. Two ticket agents at the Delta counter said the gate for Flight 723 was closed. There was never a 1:30 p.m. flight, I was told; it was always scheduled for 1:12 p.m., which was a false statement. I was put on standby for a 3:53 p.m. flight to Atlanta and a connecting flight to New Orleans.

I might have been content with waiting it out and seeing what happened, chastising myself for not leaving a half-hour earlier for the airport. But when I arrived at the Delta gates at 1:35 p.m., the 1:12 p.m. flight hadn’t even boarded as yet. The gate hadn’t closed, as the Delta reps at the ticket counter insisted. This flight that I was supposed to be on was still on the tarmac. But Delta had sold my ticket and I wasn’t allowed to board.

The airline industry has a bad reputation with consumers and practices such as this one is why. On a day when just about every Delta flight out of Buffalo was postponed or delayed, Delta never gave customers the kind of leeway and understanding it asks from us. A whole lot of other passengers were in a similar situation, I discovered. In my case, I had to find out why I wasn’t notified of the change in departure time. That meant spending the next two hours calling Hotwire, pleading with Delta’s customer service reps and contemplating other arrangements.

“The problem is when someone books with a third-party agent, they now become that agent’s customer,” Martin said, explaining part of the reason why passengers get stuck in a go-between process such as the one I was in with Hotwire and Delta. Neither of those companies would own up to a communication error, instead pointing a finger at the other.

Fortunately for me, Ainsley secured seats on a 6:50 p.m. flight to Atlanta, and when the first-class seats came up for a connecting flight to New Orleans, Martin booked them. (Neither of them was told I was a journalist until I asked them afterwards if I could use their names for this account.)

Had this situation occurred in another city, I doubt if things would have ended with such a reasonable outcome. Buffalo’s a friendly place, though, and maybe that played a role in Martin’s decency. The bigger issue is with Delta. Other airlines, such as WestJet, put an emphasis on customer experience. The first ticket agent I spoke with at the Delta counter should have had the power to resolve this case — and been encouraged to do so. Bottom line is the major U.S. airlines have a woeful reputation with consumers because their first instinct isn’t to treat us with the compassion we deserve.

The sad thing is all they have to do is empower more of their employees, the way WestJet does, and their customers would feel more cared for. Instead, flyers are left feeling like we have to be on guard when dealing with them. And, after one-too-many infuriating situations, some of us will reach the point where we choose to avoid them altogether.

Accordionist Dwayne Dopsie plays rock classics at Krazy Korner down on Bourbon Street. (Julia Pelish photo)

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA — Krista Schuster sits at a bar in Pirate’s Alley, her fiancé beside her, a well drink in her hand, the thump of a tuba in her ear and beignets on her mind.

“The best travel deal going is New Orleans,” she declares.

In December, Schuster, a Pittsburgh resident who has worked as a travel agent, made her fourth visit to the Big Easy since 2006. New Orleans has taken its punches, as everyone knows, but you can’t beat the spirit of this place, or its citizens. Mardi Gras starts March 8 here, but this is a rollicking city any time of year.

“People are so much fun, it’s cheap and the food and music are amazing,” she says.

The food and the music.

They are the hallmarks of this town, what keep people coming and what makes you entice others to visit once you’ve returned home.

Bourbon Street is a blast, but it’s not where you should spend most of your time. It’s a spot for tourists and college kids looking for debauchery. There are things to enjoy, for sure. Great music can be found in a number of places on the street and those looking to splurge should drop in on Arnaud’s for a meal. The historic restaurant, which has a small Mardi Gras museum on its second floor, is an icon of the food scene and deserves the laurels it has received through the years.

“Business isn’t back to where it was before the storm,” says Robert, my server, “but it’s improving.”

The restaurant lost part of its wine collection during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bottles were submerged, some were contaminated, others “just weren’t presentable for sale,” Robert says, adding that a few of those gems ended up being served at the owner’s home, not in the restaurant. “It’s a shame to see a ’68 Rothschild being used at a table with crackers and biscuits.”

Arnaud’s service is impeccable and so are many of the signature dishes, including Shrimp Arnaud, which is served in a remoulade sauce. The restaurant on the corner of Bourbon and Bienville is one of the pricier options in town — with entrees in the $25-$40 range — but there are many less expensive choices, including those beignets at Café du Monde that draw Schuster to the city.

“It’s the real reason I keep coming back,” she says of the doughy treats that are served covered with powdered sugar and cost just $2.14 for a serving of three. “They’re so sweet and soft like a pillow. You can’t find them anywhere else.”

The 149-year-old Café du Monde serves beignets and coffee 24/7, with the most popular location being in the French Market on Decatur Street.

Outside of the historic district, another place to hit is the Avenue Pub, which has a fantastic selection of draft and bottled beers, including several varieties from Quebec-based Unibroue. It serves pub fare, much of it for less than $10, including a thick, delicious Crab Cake sandwich.

What was it like to live here during Katrina?

“It sucked,” Andrew, the bartender, says matter-of-factly, before adding that there was great camaraderie within the city and that when the NFL’s Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010 there was optimism that better times had arrived.

The oil spill set progress in tourism back for at least last year, but bargain hunters, partygoers and music lovers still clamour to visit New Orleans. Last year, “Travel + Leisure” named it the best U.S. city for singles and in 2009 it topped that magazine’s list of “America’s Favorite Cities” in a survey.

While you won’t have a problem finding good, cheap food, when people talk about the deals in New Orleans these days they’re mostly speaking about the low cost of accommodation. Thanks to an offer I spotted on the hotels.ca website, I was able to book a five-night stay at Le Pavillon for just $65 a night. It’s a fabulous hotel located two blocks south of the Superdome and four blocks east of the Canal Street entrance to the French Quarter. Built in 1907, Le Pavillon is grand with some charming touches, including complimentary servings of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with hot chocolate served in the lobby at 10 p.m., which makes for a nice bedtime snack or a respite before another late-night stroll in the city.

That walk should take you to Frenchmen Street. It’s where the New Orleans musicians and their local followers go, and also where the arts community is helping the city to re-shape after the flood and the economic devastation caused by last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Artist Terrence Sanders recently opened a studio near Frenchmen and says the street is where the real New Orleans resides.

“The people on Frenchmen never ever go to Bourbon Street and the people on Bourbon Street, it would take them forever to find Frenchmen, so they don’t make it around here,” he says.

Sanders, who is originally from New York, has been in New Orleans for more than six years and is involved with projects aimed to revitalize the damaged metropolis.

“There is a brain gain going on in this city,” he says. “There will be a renaissance because of it. It was so cheap that it attracted architects, artists, musicians and now you’re seeing things take place that weren’t here before Katrina.”

And, of course, there’s plenty of New Orleans that has endured for centuries and keeps attracting tourists, including rustic Preservation Hall, which has seating on wooden benches for about 50 and standing room for about 50 more. In this intimate setting, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band plays classic tunes, sometimes with big-name musicians like Tom Waits. It costs $12 to enter and during the set the band will take requests, asking for a small contribution for a classic jazz standard, a little bit more for “unusual requests” and up to a whopping $10 to hear “Saints”. That may be to discourage guests from demanding a song anyone from New Orleans has probably heard every day, multiple times a day from birth. But for a visitor, no moment in the Big Easy seems complete without “When the Saints Come Marching In” playing somewhere within earshot, and during a 90-minute stay at Preservation Hall, I heard three delightful renditions of it. All by request.

Some tourists, though, come to New Orleans for the sight of saints or other spirits marching or flying or causing general mischief. Ghost tours take visitors to the reputedly haunted locales in the French Quarter, including the La Laurie mansion, considered one of the most spooky places in the United States, and the Provincial Hotel, on the site of a former military hospital that saw hundreds of casualties during the U.S. Civil War.

More tangible evidence of war damage is visible at the World War II Museum, which features the display of New Orleans’ contribution to the Allieds’ war effort: a Higgins boat that made the D-Day invasion of Normandy a success. The best thing about the museum, though, is its current feature film, a moving Tom Hanks-produced documentary about the war and its implications for all sides. As Schuster’s fiancé, Christian Groblewski, says, “You’re not human if you leave the theatre without a tear in your eye.”

Just the facts

MARDI GRAS: While Fat Tuesday is March 8, parades begin this Saturday as Carnival season descends on New Orleans.

DOING: “I’m not a ghost hunter, I’m a ghost debunker,” says Bill Arendell, a guide for Haunted History Tours in the French Quarter. The nightly tours last about 90 minutes, cost $20 and take you to some of the spots known for supernatural activity. Some of those places have to be accessed through bars or cafes, which is convenient for those businesses. But the tour is fascinating and fun (passersby will taunt tourgoers with shouts of “Boo!” or “I’m a ghost, I’m a ghost.”), with the most creepy building being the notorious La Laurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street. You stand on the sidewalk and look at the vacant building as Arendell or another guide tells you of the diabolical things that happened inside centuries ago. The public can’t go in — and, really, you wouldn’t want to.

ARRIVING: Air Canada and WestJet fly direct to New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Airport.

SLEEPING: Le Pavillon is an outstanding hotel with comfortable beds and attentive service. Room sizes are small; prices vary depending on day of travel. www.lepavillon.com.

EATING: Along with Arnaud’s in the French Quarter, you’ll want to try the Sunday Jazz Brunch at the historic Court of Two Sisters between Royal and Bourbon Streets. The food is decadent, rich Creole, Cajun and southern fare with lots of tasty choices. The shrimp and corn maux choux, a kind of stuffing, is loaded with spicy flavours.

DON’T WEAR BLACK: Those beignets at Café du Monde are covered with powdered sugar. A lot of it will end up on your clothes. You’re forewarned.

LISTENING: Preservation Hall (726 St. Peter St.) is a must. It costs $12 (cash only) to get in and lines start around 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. shows. Visitors come and go through the night for the shows that run until about 11 p.m.

The Rink at the Brink is a thrill in Niagara Falls. (Julia Pelish photo)

NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO — Skating outdoors is nothing new for Canadians. Doing it a couple of hundred metres from certain death? That gives a new meaning to going over the boards.

The unique thrill of skating adjacent to Niagara Falls is the overwhelming appeal of the TD Rink at the Brink, which opened its third season on November 30. Expectations are it will host more visitors than it did last year, when 15,000 skaters revelled in the rink set up on Niagara Parkway, about 200 metres across from the natural wonder. Despite the hyperbolic name, there’s no chance of a wayward skater plunging over the Horseshoe Falls. The only threat to a good time, really, is the on-site concession stand running out of hot chocolate.

“There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” said David Groulx, operations manager at the Rink at the Brink and a former owner of the Florida-based Sunshine Coast Hockey League. “You can’t skate this close to an attraction like the Falls anywhere. It’s a really unique experience”

Groulx maintains the ice conditions, which were very good when I went for a few spins on Saturday. It was a magical evening, actually, with the lunar eclipse that night causing a bright, orange-yellow moon to climb slowly over the Niagara night. At first glance, the Rink at the Brink seems like a victim of its own good marketing. When you walk up to it, you feel a touch of disappointment because it is not right at the edge of the Falls, but once you start to skate, the sight of the water curtaining over the cliff and the beauty of the mist rising up and then freezing as it clings to tree branches really is a thrill. I found myself stopping several times or turning my head around just to look.

“Every day is different here. This afternoon, we had a rainbow that came over the Falls and ended right here on the rink,” says Groulx. “There are days when the mist rises over the moraine here and crystallizes, and it’s just absolutely gorgeous.”

The rink, which is 60 feet-by-120 feet, will stay open until February 29. It costs $7 for adults and $6 for youths to skate, which might be a deterrent considering Canadians across the country are used to skating for free on outdoor rinks, including at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto and the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. The Rink at the Brink, though, is a distinct experience and one that’s certainly worth at least one outing.

“This is really beautiful, to see the Falls like that and with all the lights in the city. They did a great job with it,” said Kelly Dawns, who is from Toronto. She credited the rink for keeping her kids busy and blending in with the rest of the festive atmosphere in Niagara.

The city’s Winter Festival of Lights is drawing thousands of tourists, as well. Just this week, Frommers.com named that attraction the fifth-best holiday lights show in the world. There are displays of Disney characters along Niagara Parkway and then in Dufferin Islands, a couple of kilometres beyond the Falls, there’s a hugely popular light display that dozens and dozens of cars inch their way through each night.

“The view’s beautiful and they’ve got the Winter Festival of Lights going on, which is really spectacular,” said Willie Reynolds, who lives in the Niagara area and was enjoying the Rink at the Brink for the first time last Saturday with friends and family.

For sure, the rink is a great Canadian experience, right down to the most popular choice at its concession stand. “It’s fun to skate,” said Reynolds’ son, Noah, “but I like the hot chocolate best.”

Here are the links to the interview:

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.