For travellers
New Orleans, Louisiana · United States
The only American city that feels like somewhere else entirely. Come hungry, and follow the sound of a brass band.
New Orleans is a Caribbean-Creole port city that happens to sit in Louisiana, and nothing about it works like the rest of the country — the food, the music, the architecture, the way a Tuesday evening can turn into a parade. Do Bourbon Street once for the story and then spend your real time on Frenchmen, in the Marigny, and at a table.
6 things worth building a day around in New Orleans.
Photo: Wikimedia1Three blocks in the Marigny with a dozen venues, mostly free to enter, where locals actually go. Jazz, brass, funk, sometimes all in one night.
Local tip: Start around 9pm and move between rooms. The Spotted Cat, d.b.a. and the Blue Nile are the anchors.
Evening · free to $10
Photo: Wikimedia2Square, holeless doughnuts under an avalanche of icing sugar, with chicory coffee. There is no dignified way to eat them.
Local tip: Café du Monde is open 24 hours — go at 7am or midnight and skip the queue entirely.
30 minutes · under $10
Photo: Wikimedia3The oldest continuously operating street railway in the world, running through the Garden District under a tunnel of live oaks.
Local tip: Sit on the left heading uptown for the mansions. Have exact change or a Jazzy Pass.
1 hour each way · ~$1.25
Consistently ranked among the best museums in the United States, and far more affecting than you expect.
Local tip: Allow four hours, not two. The Higgins boats were built in New Orleans, which is why the museum is here.
Half a day · ~$35
Antebellum mansions, iron fences, oak roots buckling the pavements, and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 at the centre of it.
Local tip: Take a guided walk if you want the stories; the architecture alone rewards an hour on your own.
1–2 hours · free to walk
Cypress swamps, Spanish moss and alligators, half an hour outside the city — or a paddle steamer on the Mississippi.
Local tip: Morning tours see more wildlife. Small boats get further into the cypress than the big airboats.
Half a day · from ~$50
The dishes and places that make New Orleans taste like itself.
Fried shrimp or roast beef with gravy on New Orleans French bread — crackly outside, cloud inside. 'Dressed' means lettuce, tomato, pickle, mayo.
Red beans and rice is the Monday dish, from the days when Monday was washday. It is still better on a Monday.
Butter, garlic, parmesan, fire. A dozen at the bar with a cold beer is one of the city's great cheap pleasures.
Which part of New Orleans suits the trip you are taking.
Colourful, musical, walk to Frenchmen Street
Best for: Music lovers, longer stays
Oak-lined streets, mansions, streetcar
Best for: Couples, quieter stays
Residential, universities, Magazine Street shopping
Best for: Families, value
Museums, hotels, walk to the Quarter
Best for: First-timers, event-goers
1718
The French found La Nouvelle-Orléans on a crescent of the Mississippi; the French Quarter's grid is laid out four years later.
1763–1803
Spanish rule rebuilds the Quarter after two great fires — which is why its 'French' architecture is mostly Spanish.
1803
The Louisiana Purchase transfers the city to the United States and doubles the size of the country.
1800s
Congo Square, where enslaved people were permitted to gather and drum on Sundays, seeds the rhythms that become jazz.
1900s–20s
Jazz is born in the city's dance halls and Storyville district and travels up the river to Chicago.
2005–now
Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures, then a long, uneven recovery — and a culture that never stopped playing.
The French Quarter's architecture is largely Spanish colonial: two fires in the late 1700s destroyed the French buildings during Spanish rule.
Congo Square in Tremé is widely regarded as a birthplace of jazz — the only place in the antebellum South where enslaved people could legally gather to drum and dance.
The St. Charles line is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, running since 1835.
New Orleans has more than 130 festivals a year, and Mardi Gras itself is a season rather than a day.
Above-ground tombs are a practical response to a high water table — the 'cities of the dead' are engineering as much as tradition.
Not a schedule — a shape for the days, clustered so you are not crossing New Orleans twice.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
The Quarter, Marigny and CBD are walkable. The St. Charles and Canal streetcars cover Uptown and Mid-City for a couple of dollars. Rideshare after dark for anything else — distances are short and fares are low.
February to May is the festival stretch and the best weather. October and November are quieter and lovely. July and August are hot, humid and inside hurricane season. Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest fill the city and its prices.
You may carry an open drink on the street in the Quarter, in a plastic cup, not glass. Tipping musicians is expected — the bucket is how they are paid.
From the Quarter or the Marigny it is a short, busy walk. Elsewhere take a rideshare after dark and stay on well-lit main streets — the city's safety varies block to block more than most.
Café du Monde is the classic and it is open 24 hours, so go at an odd hour. Café Beignet and neighbourhood bakeries have shorter queues and are genuinely good.
Bourbon once, briefly, for the spectacle. Frenchmen for the music. Locals are on Frenchmen.
Board the historic St. Charles line and pay on board with exact change, or buy a Jazzy Pass for the day. It doubles as the best-value sightseeing in the city.
Tours, tickets and day trips with real prices, durations and cancellation terms.
New Orleans rewrote its rules to favour owner-occupants. Whether you can host is mostly a question of whether you live there.
Nashville
Live music from lunchtime, hot chicken that fights back, and a music history you can walk between in an afternoon.
Austin
Live music seven nights a week, barbecue worth queueing for, and a spring-fed pool in the middle of the city.
Savannah
Twenty-two garden squares under live oaks and Spanish moss, all of it walkable, most of it haunted according to somebody.
Your host's guest page answers everything on this page and the ones only they know — instantly, in your language, from a link or a QR code by the door.
See how it works
.jpg?width=1600)