A Cajun-country capital
An hour southwest of New Orleans, people still converse “in a French incomprehensible to most Frenchmen,” said Jennifer Miller in The Washington Post. Houma, La., sits in the heart of Cajun country, but you might miss its charms if you don’t push past the auto parts stores just off the highway. Find Bayou Black Drive, though, and you’ll be greeted by gorgeous mansions, moss-bearded trees, and chatty locals raised on oysters and nights at the local dance halls. At 1921 Seafood, the bivalves were as big as my hand and so fresh from their beds that a riverboat builder sitting beside me had to show me how to slurp them up without getting a mouthful of silt. I passed a barbecue joint and a handful of live-music venues before arriving at the Jolly Inn for a family-friendly dance, or fais do-do. A local had just taught me the Cajun jig when the band launched into its final song. “But even as people buttoned up their coats, they continued dancing.”
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“Anything seems possible” in today’s Cincinnati, said Andrew Nelson in National Geographic Traveler. One in every few Midwestern cities might be undergoing a similar Gen X–fueled renaissance, but this queen of the Ohio River “strikes me as the drum major.” Good ideas are popping up all over town, from the 24-hour art galleries at the 21c Museum Hotel to the 9-year-old American Sign Museum and a new waterfront park. But “nowhere is the clamber upward more evident than in Over-the-Rhine,” a once sketchy neighborhood now bristling with hip shops, restaurants, and craft breweries. One night, I happen upon the Night Owl Market, a lively monthly gathering of food trucks and artisans that runs to 3 a.m. Days earlier, the sight of a merengue band playing for revelers at this hour might have surprised me. But Cincinnati has changed, and so have I. In fact, “the midnight Hula-hoopers and fire twirlers scarcely faze me.”
