When President James Madison
chose Louisiana as the first State west of the
Mississippi river in 1812, he
contributed greatly to
“multicultural diversity” by adding strange and complex flavors to the American
melting pot. For Louisiana was unlike its predecessors in statehood. Our heritage as French and Spanish, not British, and its primary language remained French for decades following statehood. It was settled not by Protestant refugees or hardy frontiersman but by Catholic aristocrats and gentry.

Nearly 200 years after statehood Louisiana still takes pride in its differentness.
One of the largest cities
in the south, New Orleans, looks, smells, sounds, and tastes like no other city in America. From the
Caribbean influenced “shotgun houses” of New Orleans to the French vocabulary casually injected into conversations, from eerie above-ground cemeteries, Mardi Gras parades, foot tapping Zydeco, to great tasting Gumbo, New Orleans can make visitors believe they have slipped past an invisible boundary into a country that isn’t quite like any other in the United States and certainly not the old-line Anglo Saxon Protestant South.

Come down to the land of “Dixie” where the food, the music and the people are unique and inviting.
Have a sophisticated dinner at one of the many great restaurants, take a ride on a steamboat and
witness the Mississippi river like Mark Twain, see the primeval alligators in the bayous, or duck into
Preservation hall to witness some traditional jazz. For all of its uniqueness New Orleans and Louisiana is integrally bound up in American culture.

The Food, music, diversity, cultures,
beauty, history, and fun are
just some of the terms used to describe
Louisiana.
In New Orleans you’ll hear accented English that sounds half Southern, half Brooklyn, and is the result of a blended chorus of decedents from the Irish, Italian, French and Appalachian voices. Together with communities of Yugoslavs, Germans, Saint Dominque, Canary Islands, West African slaves, Choctaw and Chitimacha Indians, French and Spanish sugar planters form a
remarkable cultural gumbo that can be found nowhere else on earth.

The plain and simple truth is we love it here and enjoy sharing our uniqueness
with the rest of the World.