Best Things to Do in New Orleans: A Decision Guide

On a long weekend: one cemetery tour, one swamp trip, one music or food walk, and the French Quarter and Garden District on foot. That is a full, non-repetitive itinerary.

If you book only one thing, make it the swamp. It is the experience you cannot approximate on foot and the one visitors most consistently rate highest.

St Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the one most visitors want, and general public access is restricted — entry is via an authorised tour or archdiocese arrangement rather than walking in. That is the practical reason to book, not the folklore.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in the Garden District has been subject to closures for restoration work, so its status is worth confirming close to your date rather than assuming.

What separates a good cemetery tour is subject matter: above-ground burial practice, yellow fever, immigration and family tomb economics. Tours that lean on ghost narratives are a different product wearing the same name.

Combined city-and-cemetery bus tours cover more ground and give less time at the tomb; walking tours do the opposite. Choose by how much you care about the cemetery specifically.

Airboats are fast, loud, and reach shallow water bigger boats cannot. Ear protection is provided and the noise means less commentary in transit. Best for adults and older children who want the ride as much as the wildlife.

Covered pontoon boats are slower and quieter, run to a schedule regardless of the heat, and are the better choice for families, older travellers and anyone who wants the naturalist commentary.

Wildlife is seasonal. Alligators are far more active in warm months and much less visible in cool ones — a January trip is a wetlands landscape trip, not a guaranteed alligator sighting.

Most trips run from Jean Lafitte, Slidell or the Houma area, and transport from the city is the main price variable. Check whether hotel pickup is included before comparing headline prices.

Frenchmen Street rather than Bourbon Street is where most visitors find live music they actually stay for, and it needs no ticket — just a plan for which venues start when.

A guided music-history walk is worth it when it covers Congo Square, Storyville and the movement of jazz out of the city. That is context you cannot read off a plaque.

Food tours in New Orleans work because the canon is specific — gumbo, po-boys, muffuletta, beignets — and a route saves you from eating the same three dishes in the wrong places. Confirm how many tastings are included; that number, not the duration, determines value.

Cooking classes are the underrated option for a rainy afternoon and travel home better than a meal does.

A Mississippi riverboat sailing is the calmest way to see the port city as a working river, and the daytime jazz sailings are a different experience from the evening dinner ones. Steam-powered sailings are the ones with genuine historical interest.

The French Quarter, Jackson Square, the Garden District and the St Charles streetcar line cost nothing beyond a fare and are the backbone of the visit.

The National WWII Museum is the city's most substantial paid indoor attraction and needs half a day; it is not a rainy-hour filler.

Bourbon Street is worth walking once for the scale of it, and is not worth planning an evening around.

Day one: French Quarter on foot, a cemetery tour late morning, Frenchmen Street after dark.

Day two: swamp trip in the morning while it is cooler, Garden District and the streetcar in the afternoon, a food walk or cooking class in the evening.

Day three, if you have it: the WWII Museum or a riverboat sailing, then whichever of music, food or history you want more of.

Summer here is humid and thunderstorm-prone in the afternoons. Outdoor plans belong in the morning, and a flexible indoor option belongs in every afternoon.