Tourism Recovers Slowly In New Orleans

"It was a Friday afternoon in late October, and the narrow lanes of the French Quarter were quiet. Fresh paint — pale green, robin’s egg blue, canary yellow — adorned the low, tidy Creole cottages, and the wrought-iron railings of town-house balconies shone blackly in the sunlight. The streets were free of litter, the air unpolluted by the musky odor of all-night parties. But as I wandered the beautiful Quarter, one question stuck in my mind: Where was everybody?"