Happily watching nonstop jammin' and jivin' on Bourbon Street, I figure it's futile clockwatching. Enjoy the city which parties later than most and make do with snatched hours of shut-eye….

Meher Marfatia votes New Orleans on the Mississippi the most interesting US city - possibly as much as San Francisco - where she closely encounters its exciting antebellum and avant-garde faces, at every turn

It proves everything I've always expected - and, marvellously, much more. New Orleans glitters, jewel-like, crowning Creole Country. Every bit of this pulsating city, which has to be the ultimate entertainment experience and dining destination, suggests sensuous excitement. Frenzied throngs rock strictly adult casinos, Dixie diners, ragtime restaurants and jazz joints, showcasing the bold and the beautiful. Even the oyster bar at our hotel, the Royal Sonesta, superbly situated in the French Quarter's hedonistic heart, is teasingly christened Desire.

Vacationing here, my husband and I laugh at ludicrous neon-lit names like Rev Zombie's Voodoo Parlour and Howl At The Moon. From their interiors, till deep into the night, emanate enticing sounds of booming big band beats, merging with the hot and honeyed tones of rich-throated cult tunes like Louis Armstrong's It's A Wonderful World.

Once called Crescent City, located in a graceful bend of the Mississippi, then small-town New Orleans owed its growth to steamboat transport taking it from sleepy hollow to thriving seaport. Last year, New Orleans observed the 200th anniversary of arguably America's greatest diplomatic triumph: the Louisiana Purchase. In a memorably controversial deal in real estate history - more than 900,000 square miles for $15 million - the United States acquired Louisiana from France in 1803. Resulting from a complicated chain of frictions between France, Spain and Britain, the sale of Louisiana by Napoleon boosted the country's size at approximately four cents an acre and continued its expansion to Pacific Ocean shores.

This year celebrates the romantic return of the streetcar, immortalised by Tennessee Williams' poignant play, A Streetcar Named Desire. Having just resumed plying after 40 years, the prodigal public vehicle's grand re-entry has been an eagerly awaited event. You can now again follow St Charles Avenue's oldest running specimen for a charming blast from the past. The Canal streetcar, rumbling round Victorian residences, is a true tourist's dream with loads of character, almost original fittings and air-conditioning to boot - how cool is that?

Pristine Gone With The Wind territory, the setting for stories from Brer Rabbit tales to Mark Twain's schoolboy memoirs, sultry New Orleans' prime turf has equally embraced contemporary culture. Forming the taut ambience for fast-paced John Grisham thrillers, haunting Anne Rice novels and film shoots of JFK, Double Jeopardy and Easy Rider.

Serendipity rules. Our stay exactly tallies with four days of the 13th Annual New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, inviting local restaurateurs to compete for the Fleur-de-Lis Awards in savvy sipping and supping. The Rasputin vodka bar menu lures connoisseurs to elaborate tables laid with course meals assuring gastronomic gems of braised quail ragout, gruyere-wrapped asparagus, spiced poached pear with vanilla marscapone and pistachio baklava. For a fabulous first Cajun dinner we wait awhile at busy Crescent Brewhouse with longtime friend, thoroughbred New Orleans gal, Madeleine, to be dished delights to die for. Maddy points to the line 'We shuck 'em, you suck 'em', advertising scrumptious oysters.

If the garden and gift shops of districts evocatively known as Elysian Fields make for must-see stops, strolling Royal and Charles Street's one-ways provides ample instances of the quaintest southern comfort stores selling psychedelic baubles and plumes, as if this town is forever in Mardi Gras mode. Le Petit Soldier Shop, Oh Susannah Dolls Collection, Praline Parade, Rendezvous Linen and Lace, jostle for attention alongside tony, if tiny, antique studios and art galleries. Wandering, we're struck by Alan Flattman's specialist scenes of jazz funerals, the photographic quality Dean Mitchell brings to dry-brush colours and the tapestry-type effect Bosnian painter Mersad Berber imbues his work with. Deceptively balmy mornings wear on quite differently, the noon sun suddenly sweltering, too heated to handle. A clear signal to slip for cover into the Ogden Museum of Southern Art or the National D-Day Museum.

Maddy is an accomplished acolyte of the ancient Europe-imported Mardi Gras tradition. Dressed in spectacularly over-the-top but self-sewn sequined costume, crown and mask, each year she joins an exuberant bunch of regular revellers. Immersing in the festivities with heady abandon, their funky flamboyance is contagious. Bedecked in shimmering bead necklaces which they throw to bystanders from ornately decorated floats, these spirited carnival creatures move with properly planned pageantry in processions for an annual celebration before Lent, the last hurrah preceding the customary Catholic 40 days of prayer and penitence.

In a place that prides itself on leaving Bohemian bustle intact, tarot and palm readers set up shop right in the middle of leafy lanes barricaded as pedestrian plazas. At Jackson Square (complete with statue of President Andrew Jackson on horseback), hip amateur portraitists sketch amazing likenesses of passersby lazily drifting from nearby Café du Monde on Decatur Street. A familiar, much-loved landmark since the 1860s, this original French Market stand serves cafe au lait and coffee with chicory, washing down sugar-dusted beignets (doughnuts) 24 hours through.

Way beyond midnight madness, happily watching nonstop jammin' and jivin' on Bourbon Street, I figure it's futile clockwatching. Enjoying the city which parties later than most and making do with snatched hours of shut-eye, we're ready for Maddy driving us to elegant Plantation Country. Half expecting to be addressed 'Missie', I'm simply swept away into a wholly genteel Old South milieu, where period-clothed guides offer fascinating glimpses into the life of early 19th-century

Creole planters, their slave cabins and carriage driveways leading to antebellum mansions that are treasures, testifying to fortunes amassed in cotton, sugar, tobacco and indigo fields.

Cruising, we spy the bayou's typical bald cypress swamps, pecan groves and politically incorrect billboards announcing custom-made ostrich and alligator boots. Part of the River Route to three sprawling plantations - San Francisco, Oak and Laura, erected in strikingly massive Greek Revival architecture - is dubbed Cancer Alley, peppered as it is with refineries. Louisiana isn't a state with the best roads in the land and its motorists verge on lunacy, Maddy swears, swinging her little sports coupe into the parking lot of a crab shack for a lunch which witnesses us indulging in fresh displays of gluttony.

At an unabashedly touristy outlet where I pick porcelain gifts for Mumbai pals, a plaque reads, 'Free ride in police car available here if found shoplifting'. Another chuckle-worthy scrawl advises, 'Forget Viagra. Eat oysters. No prescription required!' chalked on blackboards at corner eateries. Deciding to duck into one for a snack, we wolf down popcorn shrimp and Creole gumbo soup before biting on a muffuletta, the city's favourite sandwich, decking olive salad atop Genoa salami and Provolone cheese on a toasted muffuleta bun.

This is any bibliophile's haven, I recall Maddy's energetic young friend, Josh, tell us the previous evening. It is pure pleasure to slowly savour browsing at Librairie, on Chartres Street, one in the popular chain, Antiquarian and Secondhand Bookshops of New Orleans. Emerging with a tome on classical composers for my music buff dad and another on women writers for myself, I spot signs directing out-of-towners to coach excursions to Audubon Zoo and Aquarium of the Americas, airboat adventures elsewhere.

Amazed at all we've managed to fit within a couple of days, we prepare to wind down. Airport-bound, detouring via Tulane University flanked by finely designed homes, we find boughs beginning to burst blooms of magnolia, the pretty state flower. Silken strains of Summertime waft from a wisteria-woven window, drowning the tremulous call of what we wonder could be a baby pelican. To the last, New Orleans seduces in inimitably Southern style….