Travel itinerary: 3 days in New Orleans

New Orleans: the southern city that’s a celebration of the good life – good music, good food and good fun. I don’t need to explain why it crept onto the holiday run sheet for our recent scoot around America. 

We only had three days in the Big Easy and a jam-packed travel itinerary. We all know I’m a sharer, so here it is:

Where to stay in New Orleans

The French Quarter. Well if you want to be in the epicentre of the action, there’s no alternative.

We stayed at Royal Sonesta New Orleans and it was absolutely lush. After a week of minimalism in Cuba, the king size bed, blue velvet cushions and French doors opening out onto the pool deck, was just too much.

Inside, Royal Sonesta feels like a palace, but outside it’s in the nucleus of Bourbon Street excess – strip clubs, bars and plenty of neon. It’s here every night that the street is closed to traffic, making way for the hard-core partiers and their ‘go cups’. Pulling up to Bourbon Street at 10pm on a Saturday night (after 21 hours of travel), I felt like I’d walked onto the set of a zombie movie.

How to get around in New Orleans

New Orleans is definitely not a walking city. Although it’s flat, it’s so hot and humid you struggle to walk a block without feeling dizzy and in dire need of an iced water.

On a mission to get a US sim card, Jude and I walked to T-Mobile one day. Oh man! Our legs felt as heavy as a shopping bag full of mineral water. I swear it was a five-kilometre trek, but Google Maps tells us it was only 900 metres…

So walking is out, but Ubers are great. We caught a lot of these (once we had our US sim sorted). We also bought a three-day Jazzy Pass, which you can pick up from any Walgreens (among other places). Costing you $9 for three days, it’s an absolute steal, letting your ride as many streetcars and buses as your heart desires.

Day 1: French Quarter and Uptown

Walk the French Quarter

Start the day by exploring the gridded streets of the French Quarter (or Old Quarter or Vieux Carre, as it’s also called). Stopping to admire the street performers in Jackson Square, the antique shops along Royal Street and the French architecture of St Louis Cathedral. If you’re super serious about learning the history of the French Quarter, you could consider doing an organised walking tour (I kind of wish we did).

When we were here, we decided to beat the heat and go for an early morning explore of the French Quarter. Smart, right? Well we didn’t melt, so that’s a tick. But we also got to see Bourbon Street in daylight, when the clean-up crew is busy scrubbing and hosing down the streets that smell like a backpacker’s bar on a summer’s day. We also had the honour of finding at least a dozen blokes in suits passed out in the streets.

Have a beignet (or a basket of beignets)

You can’t come to New Orleans without trying a beignet – a deep fried pillow of dough that’s doused in powdered sugar. NOLA’s famed sweet treat can be found in cafes all over the city, but it’s Café Beignet and Café Du Monde that are synonymous with the beignet (pronounced ben-yay).

Ride the St Charles Avenue Streetcar to Uptown

Whip out that Jazzy Pass and jump aboard the historic forest green streetcar that rattles its way down St Charles Avenue. It’s as slow as a donkey and the aircon is whatever breeze comes through the windows, but it’s quite romantic and the quintessential New Orleans.

We caught the streetcar all the way to Audubon Park, which we explored before meandering our way down Magazine Street – NOLA’s shopping strip.

Eat a po-boy for lunch

Another New Orleans food tradition. The po-boy is essentially a French baguette filled with a variety of meats and salad stuff. Your options for where to get one are about as endless as choosing what to have on it, with everything from chicken livers and grilled alligator to angus beef and fried oysters.

A French Quarter bar crawl

Of course, you have to spend some after dark time in the French Quarter and see why it’s a notorious place for debaucherous fun.

But, after New Year’s Eve 2009 I promised myself I’d never wake up with glow sticks around my neck again – and I’ve lived by that rule. I wasn’t about to break it in New Orleans, so that night we explored some of the French Quarter’s more classy bars:

• Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 – this tiki-themed bar serves up island-inspired cocktails and exotic snacks. You have to try the dumpling burger.
• Carousel Piano Bar & Lounge – you forgive the overpriced drinks at this hotel bar, because there’s live jazz and the bar is an actual carousel.
• Bar Tonique – considered one of the best bars in New Orleans, this dimly-lit, unpretentious drinking den skirts the line between dive bar and cocktail bar, and employs some serious mixologists.

We may have grabbed a frozen daiquiri and piece of pizza for the walk home. Maybe put on a ‘keep calm and catch beads’ t-shirt.

Day 2: Garden District and the Bywater

A walking tour of the Garden District

Providing you’re not too dusty from the frozen daiquiris the night before, jump back on the St Charles Avenue Streetcar and head to the Garden District for a walking tour of all the fancy Old Southern, American-style mansions (we did this one).

You start by touring the somewhat spooky Lafayette Cemetery, with its rows of above-ground tombs and crypts, hearing all about New Orleans unique burial practices. Then you walk the magnolia-lined streets of the Garden District, learning which houses belong to Sandra Bullock, Nicholas Cage and Anne Rice, and where Brad Pitt grew younger and younger in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Lunch at Commander’s Palace

If you’re not too sweaty after walking around for two hours in the New Orleans sun and feel like a fancy Creole lunch, head to Commander’s Palace. The bright blue and white striped restaurant across the road from Lafayette Cemetery is a New Orleans icon – and it has 25 cent martinis! Annoyingly, it also has a dress code.

Dinner at Bacchanal Wine in the Bywater

I’m absolutely, heart on the floor, in love with this night spot in the Bywater. Live jazz, wine, cheese, food, atmosphere – Bacchanal Wine has everything you could possibly want for a relaxed night out in New Orleans.

Entering through Bacchanal’s wine and cheese shop, you purchase your loot, before heading out into the courtyard and finding a table. Here you can order a bunch of different share plates – all yum – and enjoy the ‘backyard party’.

Day 3: River Road plantations

A plantation tour

An hour from the city is New Orleans’ plantation country, where a number of old sugar and slave plantations stand on the banks of the Mississippi River – a historical reminder of the deep south’s antebellum past.

There are plenty of tour companies that offer day trips out to the plantations, including Gray Line – who we went with, choosing to visit Oak Alley Plantation and Laura Plantation.

At Oak Alley Plantation you’re given a tour of the grand, old Louisiana house, before spending some time exploring the grounds and reconstructed slave quarters on your own.

Then at Laura Plantation the property’s history is brought to life through the diaries of Laura Lacoul Gore, whose family ran the Creole plantation for nearly 100 years. The tour takes in the ‘big house’, gardens and slave cabins.

Dinner at Napoleon House

Spend your final night experiencing some true Southern hospitality at this French Quarter restaurant. Be sure to get the seafood gumbo, red beans and rice, jambalaya and muffuletta  – then you can leave New Orleans knowing you’ve eaten like a true local.

Next American city on the US tour: New York City.