New Orleans is truly a one-of-a-kind city, and Tegan’s vote for coolest city in the U.S. It has a totally unique vibe and history, and a street music, food, and bar scene unlike any other.
New Orleans certainly has the reputation of being a city of excess, and that can be true… but there’s also so, so much history, architecture, and culture here, as well as some of the world’s most delectable cuisine. No matter what you do, you’ll have a blast in NOLA, but we’ve put together a walking guide to make sure you don’t miss the must-see attractions (and opportunities to sample the best food.)
We hope you enjoy our guide to 3 Days in New Orleans,
plus our Top 10 Tips for Jazz Fest!
If you are planning to visit NOLA around Jazz Fest time (late April/early May), make sure you book your lodging as early as you can. New Orleans has cracked down on Airbnb and short-term rentals recently, and the hotel and hostel prices skyrocket at Jazz Fest time. Supply is not even close to meeting demand, so prices and quality can be an issue.
When Tegan visited, she came with 9 friends from college, so lodging was certainly a challenge. After some number-crunching, it made more sense to rent a house on Airbnb located about a 15-minute drive from the French Quarter and split the prices of ride-shares into the center of the city, rather than stay in a hostel.
The house we found fit the 10 of us comfortably and allowed us to cook breakfast (when we weren’t demolishing some Café du Monde beignets, that is, but more on that later.)
However, friends who stayed a few days longer were able to find accommodations in hostels closer to Bourbon Street that came out to about the same price per night.
Another tip: we’ve heard from a lot of people that last-minute Airbnb cancellations this time of year are fairly common (in order to re-book for a higher price-per-night), so if you choose to go with Airbnb, make sure you’re booking somewhere with lots of good reviews and few automated cancellation messages.
And now on to the fun!
We arrived in New Orleans at around lunchtime, so our first stop was to find a place to grab a bite to eat. Here we encountered one of our biggest conundrums– where to choose?
NOLA has a wealth of absolutely mouth-watering establishments and it’s so, so hard to choose when you have a limited number of meals! That said, we didn’t eat a single bad meal our entire time in NOLA, so we’re excited to recommend all the places we visited! We ended up ordering crab cakes at Deanie’s Seafood, an established seafood place known for its enormous (but pricey) fresh platters and delicious seasoning.
After lunch, we spent the afternoon doing our “first look” around the French Quarter and Bourbon Street area, and listened to some live music in Jackson Square. Despite being only early May, it was already oppressively hot– explaining why May is actually the tail-end of tourist season in New Orleans! The rest of the summer is just too hot to even bother. If we go back, we may try out winter-time…
After spending some time exploring around the area and sampling a few frozen daiquiris (no open-container laws in NOLA!) we hopped on a trolley that took us to the Garden District. From there, we explored around Tulane and Loyola’s New Orleans campus, which are right next to each other, and walked around the Garden District a bit before heading to check-in at our Airbnb.
For dinner, we sampled our first jambalaya at a dive bar called Copper Monkey Grill. They also have a variety of drinks and other food at a reasonable price.
From there, it’s a nice walk over to Frenchman Street, the best place to see live music in all of New Orleans. There’s often street music, as well as several great lounges and clubs to go into that don’t charge covers. We particularly liked The Spotted Cat and Blue Nile. Frenchman Street generically has a much less touristy vibe than Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, and it’s so fun to go door-to-door and listen to the super-talented live musicians in the evenings.
Bourbon Street is fun, too, though perhaps in a bit more moderation. We especially liked trying hand grenades at Tropical Isle and dancing to cover bands at the bars and clubs lining the main drag, but if you want the true New Orleans jazz experience, you’re much better off on Frenchman Street.
Day 1: French Quarter + Voodoo + Garden District
Tip: wake up as early as you can if you want to get seated right away at Cafe du Monde’s French Market location. We arrived at around 7:30AM and were able to get a table for 2 right away.
Cafe du Monde is famous for its chicory coffee, which adds a subtly chocolatey taste to the coffee and makes it a bit less bitter, as well as its beignets, piping hot doughnuts smothered in powdered sugar and cooked to order. The combination of the two is just sublime. This place is a madhouse at any hour, but its outdoor seating is most pleasant in the early morning (for heat reasons and avoiding crowds!)
It’s lovely to stroll along the riverfront behind the cafe afterwards and take in the French Quarter Riverwalk (or Moonwalk), a 1.5 mile trail that takes you through a few parks and has great views of the Mississippi River (Old Muddy) and the Natchez steamboat.
After breakfast and the riverwalk, you’re just in time to join a 10AM free walking tour that will teach you all about voodoo. This was the first of several walking tours we went on with Free Tours by Foot while in NOLA. We wholeheartedly recommend any of the tours offered by this company, and would love to go back and check out the ones that we missed.
The voodoo tour was super informational, and mitigated a lot of untrue rumors about voodoo that have stereotyped and misrepresented the religion, which still thrives in modern-day New Orleans– about 10% of NOLA’s population is an active voodoo practitioner.
The tour started out right by the Louis Armstrong Park and Congo Square, and covered:
- Slavery and the “Code Noir” in colonial-era NOLA.
- The Haitian Rebellions
- Marie Laveau, the “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans”
- New Orleans Cemeteries and how the spirits of the dead are commemorated, celebrated, and honored
- Voodoo rituals, as well as the history behind dolls, vevers,
and Gris-Gris bags
The tour ended at a voodoo shop called Voodoo Authentica, where it was neat to briefly look around and enjoy a bit of AC. Voodoo Authentica was very close to where we ultimately went for lunch– The Gumbo Shop. This was Tegan’s favorite meal of the whole trip… check out their gumbo and etouffee sampler!
After lunch, we did a self-guided tour of the Garden District, which we had visited briefly the day before. This is one of the most beautiful areas in New Orleans, with romantic architecture and beautiful trees for a stroll in the shade. The self-guided tour walks you through the following sites, with a map included at the link above, or you can see here for our paraphrased directions:
- The Rink: an ice skating rink built for the 1884 World’s Fair, hosted in New Orleans
- Across the street, you’ll see Lafayette Cemetery #1: a municipal cemetery owned and operated by the city, opened in 1833.
Note the cemetery’s hours (Mon-Fri 7:00 am – 2:30 pm, Sat 7:00 am – 12:00 pm, closed on Sundays) as we arrived too late to visit. - From the cemetery’s gates on Washington Street, turn right on Prytania Street for one block, until you see a fence with cornstalks on it. This is Colonel Short’s Villa, perhaps one of the world’s most whimsical fences.
- A bit further down Prytania on the left is the Briggs-Staub House, the only example of Gothic Revival architectural style in this neighborhood.
- Next door is the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel, formerly a church and now owned by Anne Rice (who wrote the mega-popular Interview with a Vampire series.)
- Further along, you’ll see the Women’s Opera Guild House, a combination of Greek Revival and Italianate style, and Toby’s Corner, the longest-standing house in the Garden District.
- Across the street from Toby’s Corner is Tegan’s favorite house, sugar baron Bradish Johnson’s house, now a school for girls.
- Turning left on First Street, you can see the childhood home of football giants Peyton and Eli Manning, where the family still lives, at 1420 First Street.
- Continuing on First Street, check out the Morris Israel House, the inspiration for Disneyland California’s Haunted Mansion.
- You can also see another Anne Rice home at 1239 First Street, as well as where Confederate President Jefferson Davis died in 1889 at 1134 First Street.
- Turning left on Coliseum Street, you can see Roseanne actor John Goodman’s house, and, after walking another block, Michel Musson’s house, home to the uncle of artist Edgar Degas.
- Continuing on Coliseum, you can see actress Sandra Bullock’s house at 2627 Coliseum, and walk up to the Commander’s Palace Restaurant, rumored to be one of the best restaurants in the U.S.
After finishing up our self-guided tour, we headed back to the French Quarter and did a similar self-guided tour there, though we also returned here later on the next day for a nighttime ghost tour with Free Tours by Foot (more on that below!)
Not to miss in the French Quarter/Bourbon Street area:
- Jackson Square
- St. Louis Cathedral
- The Cabildo
- Pirates’ Alley
- William Faulkner House (now a really neat bookstore)
- Tennessee Williams House
- Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop
Additionally, be sure not to miss the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, even if just glancing in the window, as it has a full carousel inside that (if you’re lucky enough to get a seat) spins slowly around while you enjoy a cocktail.
Be sure to listen to street performers around this area, they are super talented.
Note: we likely would have done the Free Tours by Foot options for the French Quarter and Garden District tours, but the timing didn’t line up for us. It’s easy to sign up for one of their tours or do the self-guided option we’ve highlighted above.
Day 2: Jazz Fest + Ghost Tour
The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (or Jazz Fest!) is a fabulous annual celebration of New Orleans and Louisiana heritage, spread over two weekends. When we attended in 2019 it was celebrating its 50th anniversary, and is usually held the last weekend in April and first weekend in May. This was such a fun day, but there were a lot of things we wished we had known prior to attending.
So, without further ado…
Check out our Top 10 Tips
to make the most of your Jazz Fest Experience!
- Our first insider tip is to take an Uber/Lyft to the New Orleans City Park, rather than the entrance of the Race Course.
–Not only will you save money on your fare (no surge pricing), but you will also get to explore an absolutely gorgeous park while it’s still cool in the morning. It’s an enormous park, though, so make sure to have your Uber drop you off at the New Orleans Museum of Art, not just at “City Park.”
–The icing on top? There’s a Café du Monde kiosk in the park, so you can satisfy that craving while you’re there, too. We definitely recommend visiting the classic French Market location of Café du Monde first, but if you’re craving some more beignets like we were, this is a great quick fix.
—From City Park, it’s a quick 25-30 minute walk to the venue entrance. By the time we walked over, the traffic was super backed up– so this plan was definitely worth its weight in gold (and beignets.) - If you buy tickets as a group there is a small discount. We chose to attend only one day, and the tickets were about $75 each. Your ticket gives you access to each of the 12 or so tents and stages, and it is possible to buy single- or multi-day tickets.
- It’s worth waiting to see who will be performing each weekend to see which day or days you want to purchase tickets for. For example, someone in our group really wanted to see Trombone Shorty, so we made sure to get tickets for the day he and his ensemble were playing.
- Relatedly, there are usually one or two headliners per day (not necessarily a jazz act.) For example, when we went, the featured headliners were Gladys Knight and Chris Stapleton. The Rolling Stones were famously supposed to perform, but had to cancel relatively last-minute, which was a huge bummer for us.
Make sure you make a note of what time they will be performing, to make sure you’re at the right stage in advance. - Each of the 12 tents and stages features a certain type of music, including: Congo Square Stage (Afro-centric and world music); several tents featuring different types of Jazz; Blues; Gospel; Fais Do-do (Cajun and zydeco); traditional NOLA marching and brass bands; etc. There are two main stages that are outdoor: the Acura Stage (the biggest one) and Gentilly Stage (2nd-biggest) where the biggest acts perform.
- When you arrive, it’s probably best to immediately stake out a place to park your blanket and belongings, as the area gets super packed the later in the day it gets. We took turns leaving to get food, use the bathroom, refill our water bottles (there are free filling stations in several areas) or visit other tents temporarily, but spent most of our time in the Acura Stage area.
- Wear waterproof shoes, especially if you attend the 2nd weekend like we did. Jazz Fest is held at the Fair Grounds Race Course, a horse-racing track, and becomes an enormous mud pit if it rains even a little bit. We saw so many people with really cute ruined shoes, which is so sad!
For what it’s worth, Tegan wore these $8 rubber faux-Birkenstocks from Target, which were perfect.
As for clothes, go for outfits that are not too fussy and will keep you cool. The Race Course is very exposed, and there are very few places to seek shade, as even inside the tents is really hot and humid. Bring lots of sunscreen and bug spray– you will definitely need it. - Just like any concert, there are certain things you can and can’t bring in.
–“Factory-sealed” water bottles are okay, as are small soft coolers and small backpacks. You can refill these bottles at filling stations throughout the day
–You can bring folding/collapsible beach chairs and small umbrellas, but nothing bigger than that.
–There are mixed messages floating around regarding whether you can bring in alcohol. We found that this is a toss-up. Friends that went in the day before were able to bring in a 6-pack, but when we tried to do the same it was confiscated. Overall, this is a calculated risk– you may be able to bring it in, or you may waste your money if it’s taken away from you at the entrance. - Whatever you do, don’t miss the food. Believe us, we don’t usually recommend music venue food, but this… this is some of NOLA’s best.
There’s the usual suspects (gumbo, jambalaya, etc.), and then there’s crawfish beignets, cochon de lait poboys (like a pulled pork sandwich), Crawfish Monica (like a fettuccine alfredo), muffuletta, and more. The dishes aren’t cheap, but they are so, so delicious (and filling!) that we broke our “pack your own lunch” rule happily. If you get thirsty, the fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade and “freezes” (like slushies) in different flavors are sure to satisfy. - At the end of the day, you will likely have to walk a very long way to get a ride-share. It may be worth it to walk back to City Park, as we walked around for almost an hour before being connected with a driver in a residential area.
By that point we were very tired and overheated, so this is definitely something to keep in mind to avoid crankiness.
For a quick dinner prior to heading over to the ghost tour, check out Killer Poboys, a really cool twist on the traditional poboy. The roasted sweet potato, seared gulf shrimp, and glazed pork belly options were all crowd pleasers, and this was a great casual/economical choice after spending a bit more than usual on lunch at Jazz Fest.
From there, it’s a quick walk back to the French Quarter to meet up with the Free Tours by Foot ghost tour. This was by far our favorite tour that we went on in New Orleans– it is creepy, informative, and utterly captivating.
It meets on the cathedral steps of St. Louis Cathedral, and weaves several tales of ghosts, hauntings, and general spookiness all over the French Quarter area. No spoilers, but we loved hearing about Pirates’ Alley, William Faulkner’s rooftop adventures, and others.
Note: Tegan is a super fraidy-cat (as are several of her girlfriends) and this tour was much more spooky and supernatural-oriented than downright scary.
Day 3: Rainy NOLA Activities
Our third day ended up being non-stop rainy, which is unfortunately par for the course in New Orleans. But never fear, there are still plenty of things to do!
One thing we recommend wholeheartedly is setting aside at least a half day (3-4 hours) to fully explore the astounding National World War II Museum that is housed in New Orleans.
This is quite frankly one of the best museums we have ever visited, and as major museum enthusiasts… This is saying a lot.
The entrance fee is admittedly quite steep ($28 for adults, $18 for students), but extremely worth it. The museum has a variety of exhibits, multimedia, and information from personal stories and accounts. The exhibits and multimedia are unbelievably detailed and informative, and we especially appreciated the in-depth look at the Pacific Theater of the war, something that is often not mentioned as much as the European Theater in U.S. primary and secondary schooling.
The galleries are very immersive and offer a 360-degree view of different battles and settings in both theaters. You could easily spend all day in this museum, and it is a tremendously well-done homage to those who fought and sacrificed in this conflict.
Prior to departing for the airport, we stopped for a quick bite at Oceana Grill. While a bit more touristy than the other places we ate at, the food was still quite good– further strengthening our theory that there is no such thing as bad food in New Orleans! We especially liked the blackened alligator bites, alligator sausage (or “atchafalaya”), and the various oyster offerings.
Have you been to The Big Easy? What did you think? We personally can’t wait to go back. Where did you have your favorite meal? Let us know in the comments!
