NEW ORLEANS · LOUISIANA
Brass bands, iron balconies, and the bayou beyond.
Ghost walks and jazz cruises, swamp airboats and cemetery tours, Creole kitchens and Garden District mansions. The best of what to do across the French Quarter, the river and the Cities of the Dead.
Only here
A few things that only happen here.
Plenty of cities run walking tours and boat rides. The cities of the dead, the voodoo history and the jazz on a working steamboat belong to this bend in the Mississippi alone.
The Cities of the Dead
Tombs above the ground
New Orleans sits below sea level, so the dead are buried up in the air. The result is whole walled cities of marble tombs and family vaults, the oldest at St. Louis No. 1, where the voodoo queen Marie Laveau still draws visitors to her grave. Nowhere else in the country reads quite like it.
- 1 St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour
- 2 Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour in New Orleans
- 3 New Orleans City Tour: French Quarter, Garden District & Cemetery
Voodoo & the haunted Quarter
Where the ghost stories are the history
This is the most haunted city in America, and it earned the title honestly: yellow fever, the LaLaurie mansion, vampire lore, and the real, living religion of voodoo that Marie Laveau made famous. A night walk through the Quarter is half ghost story and half history lesson, until you stop being able to tell them apart.
- 1 New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour
- 2 Adults-Only New Orleans Ghost, Crime, Voodoo, and Vampire Tour
- 3 New Orleans Adults-Only Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Tour
On the Mississippi
Jazz on a real steamboat
Jazz was born in these streets, and the Steamboat Natchez still carries it out onto the river the way the city first heard it. She is one of the last true steam-powered sternwheelers afloat, calliope and all, paddling past the skyline while a live band plays on deck. The boat is part of the band.
- 1 New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Option
- 2 New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise
- 3 New Orleans: Evening Jazz Cruise on the Steamboat Natchez
Start here
If you only do one thing after dark.
More visitors build their first night in New Orleans around this one than anything else on the list.
The classics
New Orleans' Most Popular Tours
Haunted Quarter walks, swamp airboats, the Steamboat Natchez and St. Louis No. 1. The tours that fill up first.
Where to begin
The trips a New Orleans visit is built around.
The haunted walks, the swamp airboats, the cemeteries, the food, the steamboat jazz and the river-road plantations. The handful of days and nights most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
After dark
Which tour after dark?
Half the city's tours only start once the sun is down, and they are not the same evening out. Three ways to spend a night, depending on how spooky you want it and who you are bringing along.
Creole & Cajun
Come hungry. The city does the rest.
Gumbo and jambalaya, char-grilled oysters, a muffuletta the size of a hubcap and beignets under a snowdrift of powdered sugar. A food tour walks you through the French Quarter and the Marigny one plate at a time, with the story of each dish told between bites.
Read the guide: the best food tours in New Orleans →Uptown
Mansions, live oaks and the streetcar.
A streetcar ride up St. Charles from the Quarter, the Garden District is all antebellum mansions, cast-iron fences and oak branches closing over the street. Walking tours trace the architecture, the Anne Rice haunts and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, through some of the loveliest blocks in the South.
See the Garden District tours →The French Quarter
Three hundred years inside thirteen blocks.
The oldest neighborhood in the city is a grid of Spanish courtyards and lacy iron galleries, laid out in 1718 and barely changed since. Jackson Square and the cathedral, the antiques on Royal Street and the noise of Bourbon, beignets down at the river and a brass band on every other corner. It does not really sleep.
French Quarter tours & walks →Into the bayou
Half an hour out, the city turns to cypress.
Drive a little past the suburbs and the ground goes to water: flooded cypress hung with Spanish moss, herons in the shallows, and alligators sliding off the banks. Airboats and slower flatboats run out from Honey Island and the Barataria preserve, most with hotel pickup from the Quarter.
- 1 New Orleans Swamp and Bayou Boat Tour with Transportation
- 2 New Orleans Airboat Ride
- 3 Swamp Boat Ride and Oak Alley Plantation Tour from New Orleans
After hours
The town that put the cocktail on the map.
The Sazerac was mixed here, the Ramos gin fizz and the Vieux Carre too, and the bars never really stopped. Cocktail walks move from a hidden courtyard to a Carousel bar that slowly turns, with the history of each drink poured alongside it. Pub crawls and bar tours take the louder road down Bourbon and Frenchmen.
See all 20 cocktail & bar tours →By place
Pick your part of the city.
The French Quarter for the balconies and the music. The Garden District for the mansions. The bayou for the alligators. The cemeteries for the stories. River Road for the plantations. The Mississippi for the steamboats.
By type
Or pick how you want to spend it.
Ghosts if you want a scare. The swamp if you want gators. A steamboat if you want jazz. A cemetery for the history, and a food tour if you came hungry, which you should be.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in town? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without wasting an afternoon.
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