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MARGUERITE SMITH has seen a few sights in her 34 years in the French Quarter, but the jailbreak at the buggy barn ranks among the most memorable.

To hear Smith tell it, the carriage horses and mules were hungry and jittery after being cooped up during Hurricane Katrina. After the storm passed, they kicked down the doors and dashed — or walked, some of the older ones — to the nearby Mississippi River in hopes of finding food and a modicum of freedom. Like many Quarter residents even in the best of times, they were ornery and in no mood for authority figures.

"You shoulda seen it, the sheriffs chasing the mules through the dog park," said Smith, a painting contractor and musician.

The posse eventually caught up with the herd near the riverfront warehouses at the Governor Nicholls Street Wharf.

In the aftermath of Katrina, those who are here are as full of kick as those mules, stubbornly insisting they can rebuild a tourist infrastructure to be better than ever.

"New Orleans will bounce back," said John Hyman, who has lived in the Quarter for 30 years. "There is no question the French Quarter will bounce back. A few chimneys were knocked to the roof…. There was no high water."

A tour last weekend of New Orleans attractions, large and small, found them largely intact, spared the sort of wrath that destroyed so much of the rest of the city. At first blush, New Orleans' hospitality industry appears poised to find its way out of the barn — and maybe even to bring back the 10 million visitors and 93 trade shows it hosted last year.

New Orleans has always been a strange location for a tourist mecca, plopped between a lake you can't drink and a river you can't swim. Know where the city gets its drinking water? The septic end of the Mississippi. It's a hearty populace that can drink the silt and insecticide flushed from nine agricultural states. It's a hearty horse that can slurp such stuff, then pull a carriage full of tourists through the sweaty brick streets.

Longtime haven for misfits, malcontents, literary geniuses and trumpet prodigies, the city is better suited to mirth than self-pity. So far, the word on the streets is mostly positive.

"Honestly, the French Quarter is cleaner than it's ever been in 22 years," said resident Mike Howell, who has a doctorate in political science and tells fortunes for a living in Jackson Square, the bustling core of the city.

As the Quarter goes, so goes the future of New Orleans, where 14% of the city's total jobs have some connection to the travel industry. The Garden District, the elite neighborhood of gracious Southern homes, is also an important tourist draw, and its ability to bounce back will be a bellwether for recovery.

Along St. Charles Avenue, a streetcar route that connects downtown to the residential Uptown area, the majestic live oaks had a haunted, Halloween look. As evacuees awaited the word to return, the silent streets were mostly passable, and the large Italianate and Greek Revival homes seemed to have weathered the storm, roof inspections notwithstanding.

Tipitina's, the famed club on Tchoupitoulas that touts a rich stew of music from Cajun to reggae, was still locked tight 12 days after the storm. Nearby oak trees that could have knocked the nightspot out of business stayed put, and the yellow clapboard siding was unscathed. Shiny Mardi Gras beads dangled from a high branch.

Farther uptown, the Spanish moss-draped oaks of Audubon Park sustained wind damage, and branches were strewn across the popular recreation site. Across St. Charles, Tulane University's historic campus looks to have suffered neither wind nor water damage, although classes have been canceled till spring semester.

On the other side of the park, the renowned Audubon Zoo lost only two otters and a raccoon out of its 1,400 animals, officials said.

Around the Garden District, tourist haunts appeared to be in good shape. Ironically, the Garden District's lush vegetation is partly the result of an epic 1816 flood that destroyed some plantations but left behind rich alluvial soil. This time around, the levees that hold back the nearby Mississippi held, and block after block of some of the nation's most impressive historic homes escaped the flooding that ravaged other parts of the city.

From the ground, it appeared the Prytania Street townhouse where author F. Scott Fitzgerald once fought with wife Zelda sustained some roof and gutter damage. Commander's Palace — perhaps the finest restaurant in a city of sensational food — suffered minimal awning damage and a couple of broken windows. (It had been reported that a wall was down, but construction work in front was mistaken for storm damage.) Inside, the dining room was set, linen napkins fanned out elegantly across the plates.

At nearby Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, which dates to the early 1800s, magnolia branches littered walkways, but crypts sat undisturbed, although some of the city's other above-ground cemeteries were underwater.

Getting on with it

BACK in the too-quiet French Quarter — also nearly empty — portable generators hummed at the big hotels while managers waited for power to return. The bigger spots were beginning to show signs of life, and smaller innkeepers who stayed through the storm began what would likely be, for most, a quick cleanup.

The grand Omni Royal Orleans lost doors to three of its 345 guest rooms and sustained some roof damage. Two diesel generators kept power on, and two giant chillers kept humidity at bay.

A walk down Bourbon suggested that the party street prepared well for the storm. (Apparently, strippers are used to fleeing town quickly.) The Unisexxx Club's sign still teased/threatened tourists with "World Famous Love Acts by Men and Women."

At Big Daddy's lounge, one of the street's biggest and most-raucous strip clubs, a generator was keeping the iconic mechanical swing, featuring a fake pair of showgirl legs, dancing in and out of a window.

Overall, the damage to Bourbon Street was minor; some balconies were amazingly unscathed by winds that reached 140 mph. In fact, Mardi Gras garlands hanging from a second-floor blues club sparkled as though nothing had happened.

The flags at the 186-room Ramada Plaza Hotel, popular for its balcony views of Bourbon Street, were shredded, although its wrought-iron balcony was in pristine condition. Down Bourbon, the 500-room Royal Sonesta, another landmark, was in good shape as well, pending roof inspections sure to create anxious moments for building owners across the Quarter.

In his Bourbon Street apartment, artist Tom Gallagher, who resisted evacuation orders and rode out the storm with some friends who dubbed themselves the "Bourbon Street Baker's Dozen," was upbeat.

"By October, you won't even know that a hurricane hit this place," he said.

Late October seems to be a target date to reopen for many of the managers and owners in the Quarter, because Halloween is a major event and thus a big moneymaker.

Johnny Chisholm, owner of the Oz nightclub for 14 years, was assessing roof damage to his Bourbon Street site two weeks after the storm. He and manager Tommy Elias hope to reopen the sprawling nightspot in two months. Meanwhile, they were keeping track of the 40 employees who fled the city.