New Orleans is the perfect long weekend town — even if you have to spend almost as much time flying to get there as you actually spend in "The Big Easy."

Recently, my sweetie and I planned a four-day excursion to the city. I had been there a dozen years before and yearned to return. She had never set foot in the French Quarter, or any other part of town, and wasn't sure she wanted to.

We have a deal when we travel like this. With her exacting standards, she chooses accommodations and restaurants; with my give-a-rip attitude, I pick day trips and night life, all subject to consultation, of course.

Hawai'i visitors are still exotic enough in New Orleans to be remarked upon when hometowns come up, even in a shop on Royal Street in the Quarter which stocked as much Tori Richards and Jams apparel as Tommy B'whatsisname.

"Why would anyone from a warm place come to New Orleans in June?" we were asked

New Orleans' heat is different from Hawai'i's, a damp woolen blanket that enfolds you. No trade winds liven up the soggy heat.

Our visit was cooled a bit by a tropical storm heading for the city that would have ruined our vacation completely had it not veered east at the last moment to sock the Florida gulf coast.

"They are better prepared for storms than we are, so it is OK," said our B&B host without the slightest guilt about someplace else suffering in our stead.

THE PERFECT BB

The bed-and-breakfast itself was a great find, discovered while trolling the Web at tripadvisors.com. There are other hotels in the French Quarter, and more outside it, especially upriver toward downtown.

(New Orleans, like Honolulu, is a place where directions work better by geography than compass points. Upriver, downriver, toward the lake — Lake Pontchartrain — and toward the river are more reliably descriptive than north or south, since "upriver" is actually south of downriver, if you get me.)

We were looking for a small hotel or B&B in or near the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, and Deena found La Maison Marigny online. It was perfect.

Faubourg (which means District) Marigny is just downriver from the Quarter and La Maison is on the world-famous Bourbon Street just across Esplanade from the Quarter.

But — this is important — it is on the quiet end of Bourbon, far from the late-into-the-night, honky-tonk, dozen-bars-a-half-block end where (a common refrain from locals) "some drunken frat boy will throw up on your shoes."

A word here, the inevitable word, about "go-cups." Even in the Las Vegas pleasure dome they do not encourage you to walk the streets openly carrying your liquor in an cup or bottle. But walking around with booze in your hand is not only legal in New Orleans, it seems to be encouraged. Any bar — even a fine dining establishment — will gladly give you a fresh drink or pour your half-finished one in a plastic cup. Hence, "go cup."

But, back to our B&B. La Maison is a beautifully restored home that, while built late in the 19th century, is still the youngest structure on its block. The restoration of the four bedrooms, back sunroom and garden is lovely, with designer fabrics and antique or reproduction furnishings and accessories.

However, the plumbing and central air (as well as the kitchen) are brand spanking new. Each room has a color TV with a nice selection of pirated DVDs.

The hosts — who live in a house out back — could not be nicer. John Ramsay, a Tulane grad and an escaped banker, was around every morning to fix breakfast (including home-made scones) and offer good advice on where to go and what to see, all without being the least intrusive. John provides his mobile number, which you may call night or day.

At night on this end of Bourbon, the only sound you hear is the occasional clop, clop, clop of the horse-drawn buggies on their way back to the stables after a day of tours in the Quarter. Quite enchanting.

For me the best thing, though, is that La Maison is two short blocks from a stretch of Frenchmen Street where adults, including many locals, go to avoid those college boys and their go cups. Located just outside the Quarter, Frenchman Street offers several sophisticated restaurants and bars plus really excellent jazz joints.

TASTE OF HISTORY

The first of the three tours we took was the best: the New Orleans Culinary History Tour, a walk through the French Quarter led by delightful Kelly Hamilton.

You meet her on Rue St. Louis in front of Antoine's Restaurant, founded in 1840, where Oysters Rockefeller was invented. From there you wander in, out, around and through such landmark eateries as Arnaud's, Brennan's, K-Paul, Napoleon House, Bayona (where that day Chef Susan Spicer greeted us as she happened to be taking a break after lunch), Tujaque's (pronounced "two jacks"), finally ending up at the back window of the famous Cafe Du Monde to watch beignets (bayn-yays, the N'Awlins malasada) being cut, plunked in oil and sugar-dusted.

New Orleans culinary history is the saga of the city and its diverse people, French, Spanish, English, African, and, of course, the Arcadians who were kicked out of Nova Scotia and are now called Cajuns.

Can you explain the difference between Cajun and Creole, when it comes to cooking? Hamilton can; I'm still confused.

Among the delightful stories you learn is the history of the Brennan family. In the 1940s, Owen Edward Brennan founded his restaurant and with his kin has expanded into a family of famed eateries. The most famous is Commander's Palace, also originally founded in 1840, and now run by Owen's sister Ella and more kinfolk in an old mansion in the faded but glorious Garden District, upriver from the French Quarter.

At one time the executive chef there was a large young Cajun named Paul Prudhomme, who served at the Palace before opening his own K-Paul Restaurant in the Quarter and becoming one of the most influential chefs in America.

When Prudhomme left, a national search for a new executive chef brought to New Orleans a brash young fellow who worked there for seven and a half years and now honchos his own nine restaurants and gets a lot of face time on the Food Channel. His name? Emeril Lagasse.

By the time you visit New Orleans, Hamilton promises to fix the one great flaw of her culinary adventure, no food. It is pure torture to sit in the courtyard at Brennan's listening to the history of Bananas Foster or at the bar at Tujaque's, the second oldest restaurant in New Orleans, hearing about the fabulous beef brisket and not get a taste. So she is converting the tour to including tastings.

TASTE OF JAZZ

The next day we took the Cradle of Jazz tour, a romp around what remains of Congo Square, where the African slaves danced on their days off (a luxury provided by owners in New Orleans but not the rest of the South) and what remains of Storyville, the legendary, quasi-legal red-light district.

The tour is the labor of love of John McCusker, a devoted jazzophile and part-time musician, who draws his paycheck as a photographer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper. (Picayune is a Spanish term for a coin of almost no value.)

Unfortunately, McCusker's schedule has forced him to discontinue giving the tour regularly. He did it for me and my sweetie as a favor, one newspaper guy to a former ink-stained wretch. My sweetie was underwhelmed by the whole experience, but she has many other fine qualities.

Even more unfortunately, many stops on the tour — which McCukser gives in his pick-up with a CD in the dashboard player to blast out samples of the music he describes — are vacant lots.

A lot of the haunts where jazz virtuosos like Charles "Buddy" Bolden, Edward "Kid" Ory and the illustrious Louis Armstrong were born, grew up and played are long torn down or just decrepit, with little chance of restoration. In a few seedier neighborhoods, even McCusker insisted on staying in the truck with the doors locked.

There are other ways to get at least a taste of jazz history, including a recommended Grayline night life tour.

If a jazz tour holds no allure for you, consider the New Orleans Tinsel Town tour, a walk around the French Quarter to places that have appeared in some of more than 300 movies shot in New Orleans like: the James Bond flick "Live and Let Die"; Elvis' "King Creole"; "Interview with a Vampire," starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst; Marlon Brando's "A Streetcar Named Desire;" "Dead Man Walking" with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn; and "Pretty Baby," which launched Brooke Shields' career. This tour is on my list for next time.

If you've never been to New Orleans, your first choice for a third tour might be on a river boat that will take you upriver to see plantation mansions. But please consider the swamp tour.

Pearl River Eco Tour came highly recommended. Friends who live in the area booked all four of us on a Honey Island Swamp Tour offered by a company called Cajun Encounters. It ought to have been called it Close Encounters of the Cajun Kind.

Swamp tours come in two flavors. One is in an air boat with a big fan on the back. It's said kids of all ages like the noise and speed. The other kind is in a flat-bottom boat.

Cajun Encounters offers small, flat-bottom boat tours through what they call Louisiana's first nature conservancy, the Honey Island Swamp. Our boat operator, Capt. Nolan, a Cajun, allowed as how he could not tell any lies on this trip, at least not large ones, when he learned out friends were locals.

A bluff, cheerful former New Orleans firefighter, Capt. Nolan mixed tall tales with human and natural history as the boat glided almost silently through a serenely beautiful, seemingly untouched swamp with dragonflies as our constant companions.

It is no more politically correct, I am sure, than feeding peas to the fish at Hanauma Bay, but Capt. Nolan had a big bag of marshmallows and the alligators come swimming over when he tossed one or two over board.

SOFT-SHELL SHUFFLE

Deena was in charge of restaurants, as mentioned, and she swears by chowhounds.com, where food aficionados post menus and miscellaneous musings. Fodors.com has an excellent chat room for advice as well.

Chowhounds helped us find Dick & Jenny's, a restored neighborhood home owned Richard Benz, another graduate of the Commander's Palace kitchen, and his wife, Jenny.

There are no reservations and waits can be up to two hours. But the time is passed pleasurably drinking mint juleps and sazeracs on a covered "lana'i" and, the wait is worth it, guaranteed. Fried oysters are super fresh and perfectly cooked. A dish called "crawfish tasso cheesecake" (actually more like a quiche; tasso is Cajun ham) and the corn and crawfish chowder were superb.

We recommend Dick & Jenny's highly, but Carolyn McLellan, the manager at frenchquarter.com, also suggested Mat and Naddie's on River Road, Lilette, Petit Grocery, and Indigo on Esplanade Ridge as similar excellent choices.

We also dined at Brigtsen's, another restaurant in a restored older home with an extremely friendly wait-staff that prides itself on team work. The soft-shell crab and slow roasted duck were awesome as were the butternut shrimp bisque and pan-fried trout with shrimp and pecans.

Dick & Jenny's and Brigtsen's are casual. Not so Peristyle, a classic and stylish bistro on the Quarter's edge that serves outstanding Creole dishes and fresh ingredients in superb French style.

You would never know that Peristyle is a renovated drug store from the decor, the elegant clientele — or the prices. Men will need a sports coat, though not a tie; the equivalent for women. My sweetie had the heirloom tomato salad and the veal chop; I had the dive-boat scallops and Texas quail; we shared the warm apple tart. Very nice.

We saved Commander's Palace in the Garden District for the very end. It is elegant and expensive, but an experience to be relished.

We both had the three-soup sampler that includes the signature Turtle Soup Au Sherry, a gumbo and a seasonal soup. My sweetie had the pecan-crusted gulf fish, crowned with champagne-poached jumbo lump crabmeat with crushed corn sauce and roasted pecans. I had a lovely pan-fried speckled trout.

Having missed the Bananas Foster at Brennan's, we had to have it here at Commander's Palace. It is a very simple dish, really — bananas, sugar, some liqueur and an open flame — that is not so much prepared as performed, right at the table to obligatory ooh's and aah's.

MUSIC OF THE NIGHT

I tried mightily to make our trip coincide with an appearance by one of the famous blues musicians I have come to love, but it was not to be. No big names were playing that weekend, but often they are.

Still, there is music most of the day and every night almost everywhere in New Orleans. On Royal Street at noon we saw a fellow play three guitars at once, one with each hand and one with his feet. Like the dog which walked on two legs, it was not that he did it well, but that he did it at all that was amazing.

For me, a trip to Tipitina's (it is one block from Dick and Jenny's so an easy after-dinner stop) was a must. This is the mother church for blues and rock 'n' roll music in New Orleans, with a statue of the late great blues pianist Professor Longhair out in front.

Since the House of Blues in the Quarter (it's a national chain, but that's not a bad thing) arrived in the French Quarter, Tipitina's has opened a branch down there as well. The original Tip's uptown is a bit like Pipeline Cafe here (though smaller) but without a single seat. Smoking is allowed. Not everyone's cup of tea.

Over on Frenchman Street, there are several great jazz places. One, Snug Harbor Jazz Club, is an intimate, comfortable and somewhat sedate shrine to the art. There are shows every night at 9 and 11 p.m. and Ellis Marsalis — father to Branford, Wynton, Ellis III, Delfeayo, Miboya and Jason — and his group play here most Fridays.

Big names in jazz and blues like Snug Harbor because the superb sound system is great for live recordings and patrons tend to stay in their seats, sip drinks and applaud politely. There's a cover charge, with keeps out the riffraff.

Across the street is The Spotted Cat, the opposite in every way of Snug Harbor. The place is tiny and it is intimate in the way sardines in a can are intimate. The band is tucked into a tiny corner in the front window of the old store front and the crowd overflows joyously into the street, jumpin' and jivin'.

The night we were there the band was Dr. Bone and the Hepcats (I kid you not) and they played a Caribbean-flavored jazz that was all horns and steel drums and pounding rhythms. You couldn't dance exactly because of the crowd, but you could not stand still either. No cover or minimum here, but when they passed the hat, it filled up quickly. Even the riffraff threw money in. And my sweetie liked the music, which is something.

My advice is to avoid Preservation Hall, which is a less-than-perfect experience, with long lines outside and no booze inside. Instead, head for the Palm Court Jazz Cafe on Decatur Street where the house band is made up of the same kind of old-timey musicians who play the same kind of old style New Orleans jazz.

The night we stopped in, the 95-year-old trombonist was slumped over his horn like he might have passed away between sets. But when it came his turn to solo he lifted that slider and absolutely wailed. When done he put the trombone back on its rack and slumped slowly forward. Save it brother, save it for us to savor.

There's lots more to see and do — from museums and art galleries to gambling at the big new Harrah's near the waterfront — as well as many, many more places to eat, but we found a four-day, four-night tour just about right.

If you go, and perchance see Fats Domino walking about, tell him "hey" for me. My sweetie sends her regards too, I am sure.