Compiled by The International House and Karen Catchpole (note that ** selections are recommendations by iTravel iShop writer Karen Catchpole)

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Pied Nu
You’ll find a little bit of everything at this lovely boutique, from homewares, jewelry and clothing as well as beauty products. Designers carried include Cathy Waterman, Emma Hope, Les Chemin and Schumacher.

It’s a bold hotel that tries to be the coolest kid in town in a city that created the coolest music in the world but nine years ago International House set out to out-hip everyone by turning an old Beaux-Arts style building in the Central Business District into an $11 million reflection of the great city of New Orleans through a thoroughly modern prism. A recent top to bottom spiffing-up courtesy of LM Pagano, designer of choice for Nicolas Cage and Johnny Depp, has only increased the cool quotient.

Someone was throwing buckets of water at me””not just from above but from all sides””as I sloshed my way through a classic southern spring downpour and into the enormous, flamboyant (part southern belle, part party animal) lobby of the Loews New Orleans Hotel. As if on cue, someone handed me an enormous dry towel. Even more impressive? The person handing me the fluffy white lifesaver was not someone sent down from housekeeping, but a be-suited manager. A quick look around the lobby revealed more suits. With foul weather descending, the hotel had dispatched its big guns to make sure that guests were greeted with a smile (and a towel) despite Mother Nature's hissy fit outside. New Orleans is, after all, a city where rising water inspires a potent brand of self-sufficiency in its citizens.

Despite what the Louisiana tourism commission might have to say on the subject, the number one reason to go to New Orleans is not Mardi Gras or the Jazz and Heritage Festival. Worthy as those annual events most certainly are, the best reason to visit the crescent city is to see, eat and do things that you can't experience in any other place on earth, like sucking on piles of spicy crawfish after being invited to a boil by a complete stranger, or sitting next to a famous jazz musician in a tiny club on a Wednesday night and not even realizing it until he gets up onstage and begins to play.