Mid City

North of the noise and saturated color of the Quarter is a New Orleans neighborhood that’s perfected the art of living. “Welcome to Mid-City,” read the signs on the neutral ground. And that’s truth in advertising. It’s the kind of place where your auto mechanic invites you to a crawfish boil and a total stranger may buy you a drink at an Irish pub or a cannoli at an Italian bakery. Take the red streetcar line up Canal to the Cemeteries (Mid-City’s dead neighbors are as interesting as the live ones) or bike the new 2.6-mile-long Lafitte Greenway that stretches from Basin Street to Carrollton Avenue and, conveniently, past a po’ boy shop or two – or 17 – with a sno-ball shop and a micro-brewery thrown in for good measure. Buttermilk biscuits. Live music. A bowl of Vietnamese pho. Who wouldn’t want to visit? Eat. Drink. Get up here.