New Orleans is such a small town these days.
Officials report there about 70,000 people living in the Big Easy, but most are clustered in the few, livable neighborhoods with power and other utilities. Like New Orleans in the 1800s, downtown and the French Quarter are the epicenter of the city’s activity and commerce. 
That probably explains why we keep running into the same people.
We ran into Eileen and Frank O’Sullivan twice, once around breakfast time at a restaurant near Jackson Square. That night we ran into the St. Petersburg couple again at a little Cajun place on the other side of the same square. (We secretly suspected our executive editor hired them to tail us to make sure we weren’t eating too extravagantly or drinking to excess.)
On Thursday, we spent the morning with Isabelle Cossart, who is running disaster tours of the hardest hit areas of the city. We were joined on the tour by some journalists from Germany now based in Washington, D.C.
Frankly, we barely spoke on the tour.
That night we ran into our German cohorts at Tujague’s restaurant in an area of the French Quarter we hadn’t explored. (Our executive editor is getting craftier, I thought).
We had a spirited chat for 20 minutes about stories we had done in the city and about life in Florida, a major destination for German tourists.
New Orleans has about a quarter of the population it did before the storm and now we regularly bump into people we’ve met or even interviewed before.
With so few restaurants open, it’s easy to become regulars. We’ve gotten lunch to-go several times from Desire, a wonderful little Cajun restaurant a block from the hotel.
The waitress now knows I am crazy about their shrimp Po-Boy, with plenty of catsup for the fries.
New Orleans is like that now.