New Orleans

Experience Frenchmen Street Live Jazz

Skip the tourist trap bars of Bourbon Street (or at least supplement them) with a night on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny — three blocks of genuine jazz clubs, funk bars, and dance halls with live music every night of the week. The Spotted Cat, d.b.a., and Snug Harbor are the anchor venues. No cover at most bars; tip the musicians generously.

Eat Beignets at Café Du Monde

The French Market institution has served hot beignets (square French-style doughnuts buried under powdered sugar) and café au lait (chicory coffee with steamed milk) since 1862 — open 24 hours every day except Christmas. The powdered sugar will inevitably coat your clothes. Eat at the outdoor terrace tables overlooking Jackson Square for the full experience.

Explore the Garden District on Foot

Ride the historic St. Charles streetcar uptown and walk through the Garden District admiring the magnificent antebellum mansions, including Anne Rice's former home at 1239 First Street. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 (above-ground tombs that inspired countless novels and films) is free and open for self-guided tours. Magazine Street offers excellent post-walk dining.

Take a Swamp Tour

The cypress swamps and bayous surrounding New Orleans are unlike anywhere else in North America — a primordial world of Spanish moss, herons, turtles, and alligators. Multiple operators run boat tours from dock areas outside the city. Airboat tours are more thrilling; slower pontoon boats allow closer wildlife observation. Best from spring through fall when alligators are active.

$60-90/day

$150-280/day

$300-1000+/day

French Quarter (Vieux Carré)

The oldest neighborhood in New Orleans is the city's cultural and tourist heart — 80 blocks of 18th and 19th-century Creole architecture featuring the lacy ironwork balconies that have become the city's visual signature. Bourbon Street is the raucous entertainment spine; Royal Street is quieter and more elegant with antiques and galleries; Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral anchors the center. Café Du Monde serves beignets and café au lait 24 hours a day.

Garden District

Uptown from the French Quarter, the Garden District is where wealthy Americans (rather than Creoles) built their plantation-style antebellum mansions in the 1840s-1860s, surrounded by enormous live oaks, magnolias, and lush subtropical gardens. The neighborhood is the architectural counterpoint to the French Quarter. Magazine Street runs through the area with excellent restaurants, boutiques, and galleries.

Marigny & Bywater

Downriver from the French Quarter, the Faubourg Marigny and Bywater neighborhoods offer a more local, artsy alternative to the tourist French Quarter. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny has replaced Bourbon Street as the live jazz destination of choice for locals — multiple clubs with no cover, local musicians, and a genuine neighborhood atmosphere rather than a tourist trap.

Tremé

America's oldest continuously inhabited African American neighborhood and the birthplace of jazz — the Tremé (Trem-AY) produced Louis Armstrong and countless jazz legends. Louis Armstrong Park at Congo Square (where enslaved Africans were permitted to gather and play music on Sundays) marks the symbolic origin of jazz. The neighborhood's second-line parades continue the tradition.