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Recently my wife and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary by spending our first week alone together since, well, our honeymoon. That’s what two kids will do to you.

While our first vacation as man and wife was great on the surface — we nuzzled while sipping piña coladas on tap on the beaches of Ocho Rios and Negril in Jamaica — we didn’t soak up any of the local culture, try as we might. As soon as we ventured outside our hotel complex, the natives offered us heroin or tried to pry our U.S. currency from our wallets by acting as “tour guides.”

So we retreated back to the hotel, where we might as well have been at any other anonymous sunny resort. The lounge band played countless versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” while Bob Marley rolled over in his grave.

Our time sunbathing, swimming and sipping cocktails all week — and missing out on all the things that make Jamaica special — was fresh on my mind when we visited New Orleans for our second honeymoon. While many tourists come to the Crescent City for the excesses of Bourbon Street — with its hurricane cocktails, ear-splitting rock bands, bikini-clad hostesses and God-knows-what depravity — we mostly avoided that strip and saw as much of the real New Orleans as we could in the short time we were there. (By the way, do you know how you can tell when you’re on Bourbon Street? Everyone claps on the wrong beat.)

Since I’ve been preoccupied with New Orleans music, food and history for the better part of two decades, I’d been dreaming about my first trip to NOLA for many years. My level of anticipation was so high, in fact, that I was afraid the Big Easy would not meet my lofty expectations. It did — and then some.

So, how do I love New Orleans? Let me count the ways ...

• I love New Orleans for the braised pork cheeks over sauerkraut potato cakes at Cochon in the Business District, a restaurant that doesn’t waste any part of the pig.

• for the all-star brass band busking for tips at the corner of Canal and Bourbon, while dancers dodged cars. Never have I heard “Lovely Day” or “Sexual Healing” like that before.

• for the café au lait and beignets drowned in powdered sugar at Café Du Monde, where one should never wear black.

• for John Boutté’s set at d.b.a. on Frenchmen Street, the best $5 we ever spent. Boutté, a Sam Cooke for our times who sings the title track for the HBO series “Treme,” had me tearing up during his life-affirming cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

• for the messy muffuletta from Central Grocery, an Italian shop filled with jars and cans of preserved goodness from floor to ceiling.

• for Vaughan’s Lounge, a neighborhood dive in the Bywater district, where trombonist Corey Henry led Kermit Ruffins’ Thursday night band in a memorable bossa nova version of “If I Only Had a Brain.”

• for all the French Quarter buildings with stories, such as the LaLaurie Mansion where Madame LaLaurie was caught torturing slaves in 1834. (She fled to Paris after being threatened by an angry mob.) Nicholas Cage once owned this supposedly haunted house.

• for the French Market coffee at Mena’s Palace.

• for the 200-year-old building known as Preservation Hall. There’s no food or liquor at this dusty old building, just old-time jazz.

• for the magnificent St. Louis Cathedral, which towers over the street peddlers — and everything else — in Jackson Square.

• for the moving exhibit on Hurricane Katrina at The Presbytre, which has Fats Domino’s ruined Steinway displayed in the lobby.

• for the many local cocktails: The Sazerac at — where else? — The Sazerac Bar inside the Roosevelt Hotel, the most elegant place I’ve ever set foot in; the Vieux Carré at The Carousel Bar (it spins) at Hotel Monteleone, where Truman Capote claimed to have been born; and for the Pimm’s Cup at the Napoleon House, built in 1797 and offered to the French emperor as refuge during his exile (he never showed).

• for the cool Abita at the city’s oldest tavern, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, where drinks are served under candlelight.

• for Tuba Skinny, a trad-jazz band playing for tips in front of Rouses Market on Royal Street. We marveled at the percussionist, who was rubbing a washboard fitted with a tiny cymbal and coffee can.

• for all the history inside St. Louis No. 1 cemetery, the final resting place of Homer Plessy, the plaintiff from the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision on civil rights; as well as Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, whose family tomb receives regular gifts — coins, candles, Mardi Gras beads, alcohol, etc. — from visitors hoping for good luck. The cemetery was also the site of the acid freakout scene in “Easy Rider,” which got future Hollywood film crews forever banned by the local archdiocese.

• for the second line parade near our hotel.

• for the yellowfin tuna carpaccio at Muriel’s, whose balconies overlook all the revelry in Jackson Square.

• for the smoked salmon with capers, andouille, tasso and alligator sausage included in the breakfast buffet at our hotel.

• for the Louisiana Music Factory, which has all the New Orleans rhythm and blues, jazz, brass band music and soul you’ll ever need.

• for the graceful mix of Greek Revival, Italianate and Victorian architecture in the Garden District, and the romantic blend of Spanish and French styles in the French Quarter.

• for Congo Square, the site inside Louis Armstrong Park in the Tremé, where the slaves danced and sang every Sunday. This was the birthplace of jazz.

• for the Ferdi Special po’ boy with turnip greens at Mother’s, a hole in the wall that’s home to the “world’s best baked ham.”

Most of all, I love New Orleans for the bounce it puts in everyone’s step. The city literally sings to you as you stroll — or sashay — down its storied streets. We can’t get back to The City that Care Forgot fast enough.