Travel America: Belle of the Bayou New Orleans: the good times roll every day in this melting pot on

Spicy food, cool jazz, and gaudy parades. Colonial antiques, Greek Revival architecture, and stately mansions wrapped in wrought iron and green finery. History, hedonism, and hotspots.

New Orleans defies categorization. It has no single characteristic, peg, focus, or landmark to define it, nor central theme lending itself to a single-sentence description. It just can't be done.

To prove this, one has only to explore the district which, more than any other neighborhood or characteristic of New Orleans, connects the city with an image--the French Quarter. The 90 square blocks that make up the city's original settlement contain as much contradiction as any comparably sized urban district in America. Families returning from church and tourists with kids take horse-drawn carriage rides through the narrow streets, while saloon keepers on Bourbon Street sweep out the remains of last night's raucous crowd. Finely dressed gentlemen and ladies dine on haute cuisine in expensive restaurants as body-pierced, tattooed revelers in T-shirts cavort just outside their windows.

Voices thick with Cajun accents hawk vegetables and crafts at the French Market, while tarot-card readers tell fortunes from card tables on St. Peter Street. The old bells of St. Louis Cathedral ring down on modern artists displaying their paintings along Chartres and St. Ann streets, while rough-hewn voodoo paraphernalia and glittery carnival masks hang on shop walls along Decatur Street. Tour guides explain the War of 1812 in Jackson Square, while riverboats, emulating the lifestyle of that same era, get ready to cruise along the Mississippi River as it winds its way around the "Crescent City."

The puzzling collection of contrasts seems concentrated inside the Quarter, but it exists outside as well. And if there is something approaching a commonality, it seems to be tolerance and co-existence. Where else, for example, can you ride an olive green streetcar built in 1924 through a neighborhood of leafy trees and vintage mansions, one of which was used as a set for a movie about a 12-year-old prostitute (Pretty Baby starting Brooke Shields and Susan Sarandan)? The street is St. Charles Avenue, and the neighborhood is called the Garden District, where resident and writer Anne Rice, renowned for her vampires and living-dead characters, shares the academic and earthly surroundings with Tulane and Loyola universities. Uptown in this upscale district, you'll find few parking spaces, but plenty of parks, lots of students, and downhome diners.

Dismounting the streetcar at Canal Street and walking toward the Mississippi, more co-existence is evident. A half dozen of the city's 700 churches are within a dice roll of one of New Orleans' hottest attractions, the gigantic Harrahs' Casino, which occupies a somewhat triangular city block at the end of Poydras and Canal streets. Mardi Gras parades wind their way past hundreds of gaming tables and slot machines. The lights never go out and, like New Orleans, the casino never sleeps. There are no closing times in the Big Easy.

The population stew and tolerance that permeates modern New Orleans can be partially explained by the city's roots. French explorers from Canada looking for the mouth of the Mississippi came to the area and claimed it for France in 1682, naming it Louisiana in honor of King Louis XIV. A Scottish swamp salesman named John Law scammed colonists from France, known as Creoles, into buying land here, but in 1762, the colony was transferred to Spain. New Orleans was already a major shipping port when two major fires--in 1788 and 1794--destroyed the city. It was quickly rebuilt, and in 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte talked Spain into giving the territory back to France, a proceeding that took place at the Cabildo overlooking what is now Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

President Thomas Jefferson, appalled by the prospect of French domination in the region, and aware that Napoleon was short of cash, bought New Orleans as part of the $15-million Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Americans poured in, building fine homes across what is now Canal Street in the Garden District. African-Americans came as slaves and free workers, bringing with them African-based voodoo and music. When the British tried to seize control in the War of 1812, a bizarre conglomeration of blacks, Creoles, Choctaw Indians, Kaintucks (river boaters), and pirates joined General Andrew Jackson's Tennessee Volunteers and drove them off.

No wonder New Orleans, with its great melting pot population, now offers such a potpourri of culture, food, and entertainment. You need a glossary of terms to understand just a small portion of local attitudes, accents, and meanings. Creoles are folks whose origins are early French or Spanish settlers, while Cajuns are descendants of Acadians who arrived here from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick after being expelled by the British in the 18th century. Cajun and Creole restaurants have distinctly different menus. Cajun cooking features tangy and robust dishes, like crawfish bisque, gumbo and jambalaya; many are based on a mixture of fat and flour called roux. Creole cooking is spicy, ranging from haute cuisine items such as oysters Bienville down to basic fare like red beans and rice. Cajun music, not surprisingly, sounds a bit like country music in Quebec, with dancing somewhat akin to a two-step jitterbug. Lyrics are often in a local Cajun French dialect, and the traditional dress is upcountry casual. A good place to sample Cajun food, music, and dance is Mulate's, at 201 Julia Street.

Jazz--born here 105 years ago--is nevertheless still king in New Orleans. Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, Pete Fountain, Buddy Bolden, and innumerable others have made it legendary here. Derivatives, such as Dixieland, rhythm & blues, and gospel, also thrive in the "City that Care Forgot," along with rock and Latin salsa. A good sampling of just about everything can usually be found at House of Blues at 225 Decatur in the Quarter. Or, if your wallet allows it, try Arnaud's and the Richelieu Room at 813 Bienville for both fine food and jazz.

Although New Orleans can show its tawdry and somewhat unsavory side, it can also be a great family place. Kids are fascinated by street performers, shops in the French Quarter, riding on the clanging, rumbling street car, and checking out the animals at the Audubon Zoo or the Aquarium of the Americas, one of the top five in the nation. There's also the Children's Museum, Jazzland theme park, and an IMAX theater. World War II buffs will not want to miss the National D-Day Museum, located in the Warehouse District at 945 Magazine Street. It contains the most comprehensive collection of oral histories and memorabilia from the Normandy invasion ever collected.

Once in the Quarter, many make a beeline for the district's most publicized eating venues. There's breakfast at Brennans at 417 Royal Street and a courtyard jazz brunch at the Court of Two Sisters two blocks down the street. A cup of chicory coffee and a beignet (a square-shaped doughnut, without the hole, sprinkled with powdered sugar) at Cafe du Monde should be on your gastronomic agenda as well.

It's all part of the New Orleans melting pot; a seemingly incongruous sampling of different historical, cultural, and culinary interests, and one reason why the city has so many nicknames, including "Jumbo Gumbo Pot of the South." But unless you want to be immediately branded as a Yankee, never pronounce the city's name as "Noo Or-leens," even if it does rhyme with Cajun queens. To blend in better, call it "N'Awlins." For all the rest of New Orleans' local pronunciations, you may need a lifetime.

For tourist information, contact the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau, (800) 672-6124. The website is www.neworleanscvb.com.