La Belle Esplanade

Highly recommended. If you’re thinking about booking La Belle Esplanade just do it! You won’t be disappointed. Located North of the French Quarter so quiet, there some nice local restaurants and a couple of neighbourhood bars worth visiting where there isn’t many tourists. The room are very spacious, well equipped, full of quirky furniture and decor. Matt and Mel were lovely, as well as providing a nice breakfast and fresh coffee each morning they offered lots of advice to help make the most of our stay. If we return to New Orleans one day, this is where we’ll be staying.

We couldn't have chosen better for our first trip to New Orleans. Matthew and Melanie are truly excellent hosts. Their knowledge of the area is huge and their love of NOLA is infectious. We consider this place and these people to be one of the best holidays we've ever had. The accommodation is just lovely, so many quirky things that make each suite personalised and fun. We had the Clio Suite which was beautiful and comfortable. The breakfasts were different every day, with curated goodies and their background provided with a dose of good company and good advice. The French Quarter was lovely, especially once you moved away from Bourbon St! But Treme district has so much to offer as well. We walked for miles every day and so enjoyed the neighborhoods we visited. Do yourself a favor and go to La Belle Esplanade and get to know NOLA the way we did. You will not regret it!

This was my fourth time staying at La Belle. Matthew and Melanie are what it's all about. Do you want an insider's guide to the city, with a running comedy show alongside? Just book and stay at La Belle Esplanade. Matthew and Melanie love New Orleans, and want you to fall for it as well.

An excellent stay. The hosts are fun, kind, and quirky. They made breakfast with the other guests feel almost like a family gathering. The room was beautiful, very clean, and well maintained. The hosts are very knowledgeable of the area and gave us some excellent pointers on where to go and what to see.

This was our first trip to New Orleans and first Bed & Breakfast experience and we could not have asked for more from either! Matthew and Melanie are the perfect hosts to a truly unique place. We were given wonderful recommendations to start our days and then allowed the city to guide us the rest of the way. We highly recommend this experience to anyone who wants to have a great New Orleans experience.

I'm fairly sure I found La Belle Esplanade searching for "unique hotel New Orleans", and wow did that search deliver. If you want the reassuring sameness of a generic hotel room with a key-card and an ice machine down the hall, LBE is not for you. If, however, you want breathtaking architecture, a spacious suite, and charismatic hosts in a quiet, historic neighborhood - close enough to everything NOLA has to offer, yet far enough from the touristy areas to take a nap in the middle of the day - book now! Every morning begins with breakfast selections handpicked that morning from local vendors. Freshly baked bread with butter and a selection of jellies, pastries, meat, cheeses, fruits, and a bit of something warmed up (grits, stuffed crab, jambalaya) along with coffee and orange juice. While you feast, Matthew and Melanie will chat with you about your adventures the previous day and give recommendations on off-the-beaten-path places to check out. The location is fantastic. About a mile from the French Quarter in one direction and City Park in the other. There's a Blue Bike station a block and a half away in front of the coffee shop that you might want to visit if you wake up too early to want to bother Melanie for coffee. They open late on the weekends though. Matthew was a good sport when he caught me in a cranky mood about that. (Also when my boyfriend broke a key in a lock about 15 seconds after we arrived.) The bed was very comfortable with fluffy pillows (why does Tripadvisor really want to know about the fluffy pillows?) and there were power strips in almost every outlet. There's wifi. There is a TV although we never used it. There's a mini-fridge and a mart close by to grab whatever you might want to put in there. Under the sink there are q-tips and floss in case you forgot yours - nice little touches. The house is over 100 years old. It's beautiful. It also has steep stairs and kind of quirky plumbing - what can you do? In the 1920's I'm sure they appreciated just having running water in the house. To get out onto the balcony overlooking Esplanade, you open the floor-to-ceiling window and the counterweights jingle a little bit for ambiance. We'll miss that window. I would have appreciated a grab bar to get into the claw foot tub/shower, and the curtain felt a little claustrophobic. When I thought about suggesting a change, I looked up at bar securing it to the thousand-foot ceiling and thought "wow, that would be difficult". A grab bar wouldn't be that hard though. That's my only suggestion, really, and not meant as criticism, more of a safety issue. I'd be even crankier than I am before coffee if I busted my a** trying to shower. We will be back, and have to struggle with the age-old dilemma of staying in the familiar room or trying a new one. A big thank you to Matthew and Melanie for being great hosts and sharing their love of the city with us.