Rohit Gopi and his wife were looking for somewhere to vacation. The place didn’t matter. They just needed a getaway from the hustle and bustle of Atlanta. Gopi’s wife, Kavita Serrao, suggested New Orleans, on a whim. 

Despite calls from friends questioning their decision to take a trip to the city, which they figured was still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, they made their reservations, hopped on a plane and never looked back.

They were pleasantly surprised with what they found.

 ”New Orleans is a great city,” Gopi said, sitting in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street. “There are a lot of misconceptions about it.”

For four days they sampled the local attractions: a meal at ACME Oyster House; trips to the Saint Louis Cathedral and a historic cemetery; strolls down Bourbon Street and a carriage ride through the French Quarter. 

“You can capture 70 percent of New Orleans by just being in the French Quarter,” Gopi said.

While many would disagree with Gopi’s assessment of the New Orleans experience, the perceptions and misconceptions of those who visit New Orleans some four years after Hurricane Katrina are as varied as recipes for the perfect gumbo or étouffée. 

 ”It depends on whether you look at the glass as half empty or half full and depends on which half of the glass you’re in,” said Rob Olshansky, a professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois who follows the recovery progress in New Orleans.

Olshansky said that it also depends on how much of the “glass” one sees. Many tourists come to New Orleans specifically for the French Quarter attractions, and rarely venture into the neighborhoods where much of the recovery work still needs to be done. Home occupancy is at 74 percent of what it was before Katrina and school enrollment has barely exceeded half of what it once was.

New Orleans is a dynamic city, long seen by outsiders as a place rich in history, uniquely diverse and boasting exceptional cuisine. But the hurricane gave the world a different vision of the city, one of poverty and ruin. 

“We still have to continue to prove that we are recovered,” said Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. “A lot of people wonder how many hotel rooms are even available and how many restaurants have reopened.” While Romig is confident the city can accommodate visitors, jobs in the hospitality industry have fallen 22 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 Those who visit New Orleans become unofficial spokespeople for the city and the progress it’s making. 

Adrienne Voorhees, a Minneapolis native who takes frequent trips to New Orleans to visit her boyfriend, said that friends constantly inquire about the state of the city.

 ”I tell them a part of the city is missing,” Voorhees said, adding that she defines New Orleans as being much more than the French Quarter. Her perspective has been shaped over the past six years from her many trips.

Another repeat visitor who is familiar with the city before and after the hurricane said that there was still something askew about the city’s soul.

Cora Monroe has made the five-hour journey from Shreveport, La., to the Superdome each year for nearly two decades to attend the Bayou Classic football game between Grambling State University and Southern University. Before Katrina, the trip was as much about socializing with friends and enjoying the wonders of New Orleans as it was about the football game, Monroe said.

But after the storm, things were different.

 ”I didn’t find it to have the same atmosphere that it has previously had,” she said. “You can see there is an effort to make things look like the way there were. But I still see years out before New Orleans is New Orleans again.”

While Monroe said she has missed only one Bayou Classic in the last 20 years and refuses to miss another, she said the things that drew her to the city beyond the game have faded. And if not for the major annual events she doubts that she would return.

 ”It’s the most important city – spiritually, intellectually, culturally – in America,” said Tommy Stevenson, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., who has made the trek to the city every year since 1976 to attend the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Music is his religion, Stevenson said, and nothing will keep him from going to Jazz Fest.

 He has watched the city gradually improve since the 2006 festival, the first after the hurricane, when cardboard was still being used for street signs.

 ”The health system wasn’t working, the criminal system wasn’t working – nothing was working,” said Stevenson, recalling the early days after the storm. “It was all the infrastructure, not just the brick-and-mortar infrastructure, but the social infrastructure.”

Four years later, with the worst of times behind the city, Stevenson said he is seeing a new stage in the city’s recovery – with a caveat.

“This year it felt like the old New Orleans for the first time, but there was an irony to that because of the recession.”

Much of the work to rebuild the city has been done by relief workers, many from out of town. By working side by side with residents to restore their neighborhoods, these volunteers are able to gain a perspective that other visitors miss.

Frank Janzow, the pastor of the Ascension Lutheran Church in Waukesha, Wis., came to New Orleans for the first time in 2007, working with people in need. The experience opened his eyes to the poverty in New Orleans.

“I think in some ways Katrina ended up turning the attention of many to face the fact that the city of New Orleans is needing our help,” Janzow said.

He has returned to New Orleans every January since his first trip, each time bringing with him a group of volunteers.

“As an outsider looking in, it seems to me that there is progress, but it’s fairly slow,” Janzow said in a recent phone interview.

 ”The rest of the country seems to be now moving on and saying that, ‘That’s history,’ and that ‘New Orleans is back,’ he said.’ ” The church people know it’s not back.”

Gopi and his wife, the tourists from Atlanta, said that every day in New Orleans there was something new to experience and that they were looking forward to getting back home to “ruin the misconceptions.”  

But there was one moment when they realized they had a misconception of their own.

The couple took a tour of the city and saw white crosses planted in lots left vacant by floodwaters, and “little x’s” spray painted on houses, something that they thought marked the flood line. 

When told the four quadrants of  the x’s  were used by rescuers to indicate that a house had been searched and in some cases how many bodies were found inside and when, they fell silent.