Beignets and chickory-flavored coffee... not

The cathedral bells woke me at 7 with a jolt (do they turn them off after midnight?). Swept the scattered array of leaflets and brochures into a heap and tossed clean and dirty clothes willy-nilly into the overnight bag: the sun was already rising high enough to shine into the Quarter's narrow lanes. I wanted to walk and photograph early morning in Tim's old haunts, and then explore further into the Katrina-damaged neighborhoods before heading along the Gulf Coast towards Mobile.

It was chilly and windy, if bright, and I resolved to buy a new pair of fingerless gloves the minute I got back to Blighty; standing, wind-buffeted, on the Artillery Platform was a refresher course in Real Winter (something we don't really have in southern California). Below, the first stirrings of the Quarter: bums gathering outside the Cathedral, workmen sweeping the few remnants of late-night partying into bins, an early mule-carriage jockeying for position with a street sweeping machine, the female driver standing imperiously on the driver's box shouting into a mobile phone.

The Cafe du Monde, the French Market's most famous coffee joint and fabricator of mind-blowing Beignets, was already busy; a busker trundled his luggage cart down the street to take up a position, armed with his trumpet and Bible, outside its door. I hurried on past the golden statue of Joan of Arc, towards Esplanade and Elysian Fields, in search of the pool-hall-cum-laundromat-plus-bar (still there), the Blue Nile (still there), and Until Waiting Fills (missing it appears, unless I had my directions wrong). Cafe Brazil was still there, opposite the Nile, and that was reassuring.

Thoroughly frozen and famished, I turned back to the French Market: Cafe du Monde was so mobbed I couldn't find a seat even outdoors under the space heaters, so slogged back to the other, rather rattier end of the Market, for a comfortingly hot stack of blueberry pancakes and mugs of hot tea, served with verve at the Barracks Street Cafe.

I cruised back to the Place d'Armes via Royal Street, grabbing a shot of Tim's old apartment through the gates before being squashed by crates of lettuce being delivered to the corner shop. With a (very few) minutes to spare before check-out time, I ran around the corner to the Cafe du Monde's shop (the queue for the cafe itself was now out the door), for a can of proper French roast coffee and a trinket or two. The young woman behind the register, a touch of Goth with a lilting Quarter accent, was tsk-tsking over the Times-Picayune's editorial on Bush's failure to mention Katrina in the State of the Union address.

Over a basket of pressed tin crosses and a stack of plastic key chains, we talked about the city's recovery and my husband's personal interest in same. When reassured I was driving, not walking, she gave me some directions: "You know Elysian Fields? Well, just go up a few blocks and then turn right down any street: it's all right there. You go along Claiborne, east, it's all around you. Keep going on Elysian up to Gentilly and turn left instead: same thing. Everywhere's the same mess..."

And so I thanked her for the coffee and directions, collected car and baggage from the hotel, and set out to see what happened to the city that Bush forgot.