Do ya know what it means to miss New Orleans?

We have a 20-year secret love affair with New Orleans... N.O. is like the skanky girl your Mom told you not to hang around with, but you did anyway, because no one - no one! - had more fun. Through the past two decades, we have collected some amazing New Orleans memories:

* Going to Commander's Palace with a group that included Julia Child - Mrs. Brennan and the entire waitstaff was standing at attention by the gate to the restaurant when we arrived - handsome old waiters with their white serviettes over their arms... and they served us Sazeracs and champagne cocktails from silver trays in the garden...

* Visiting a voodoo priestess - my sister and I writing our wishes and placing them on an altar to Marie Laveaux - in a courtyard overrun with chickens and goats... all taking place a block from the soaring office towers on Canal Street...

* Dancing with fat old ladies, little kids and skinny guys in cowboy hats at a real Cajun fete de dieu at the old Tipitina's on Napoleon Street... everyone laughing, drinking and enjoying the music of Clifton Chenier...

* Renting an apartment on Dauphine Street and walking at sunrise to the French Market to pick up beignets for breakfast. Uncharacteristically peaceful - most of the revelers finally gone home to bed - and the streets gleaming from the recent passage of the streetsweeper - sharp smell of chicory coffee in the air.

All this and more - and yet we made a new discovery this trip - the old Ursuline Convent down by the Cathedral. Built in 1745, full of historic treasures, including a letter to the sisters from Thomas Jefferson, whose eloquent prose still jumps off the page two centuries later. Sitting in the quiet garden, companionable with sculptures and chirping birds - this is what it must have been like when New Orleans was just a small French town on a big muddy river.