Beignets. Jazz music. Festivals. Ghosts. Gumbo. New Orleans is famous for about a zillion things, and all of them are well worth taking a trip to the Big Easy!
New Orleans is one of the most unique places in the USA: it’s a fascinating melting pot of French, Spanish, First American, and West African culture. It looks like nowhere else in the country, with a complex history that reflects the story of the United States. And the food is like nothing else you’ll find anywhere else in the South – or the entire country, for that matter.
Oh, and then there are the parties: New Orleans throws a better party than anywhere else, y’all, and I say that without even having been to Mardi Gras!
When we booked a trip to visit a friend in New Orleans, we wondered whether 3 days in New Orleans was enough. (Mind you – that’s 3 FULL days, not including travel days.)
Here’s the thing: 3 days is just enough to get a taste of New Orleans. It’s enough time to check off just about everything on the top of your “things to do in New Orleans” list, eat plenty of Creole food, befriend some ghosts, learn about the fascinating, complex history and culture, and explore New Orleans’ most beautiful neighborhoods.
But you’re probably going to leave New Orleans wanting to come back – because 3 days in New Orleans is the also perfect amount of time to whet your appetite. It’s an introduction to one of the USA’s most fascinating cities, and it’s just enough time for an excellent introduction.
In fact, we found ourselves back in New Orleans just a few months later – for Halloween! Ahem: HIGHLY recommend.
So without further ado, here’s everything you need to get the most out of your 3 day New Orleans itinerary!
Table of Contents
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Many folks planning a trip to New Orleans want to stay in the French Quarter. It’s definitely the most iconic and famous part of town (and arguably also the most haunted, if you’re into that) but it’s also… the noisiest. And the most crowded. And the most expensive. To get the best deals we recommend using Kayak to price-compare prices on hotels for your trip!
So instead, we recommend that you stay in the Garden District. It’s quiet, it’s beautiful – gorgeous mansions and gardens galore – and it’s got several of its own attractions to explore!
Sure, you’ll end up needing to take a Lyft or the historic St. Charles Streetcar to and from the French Quarter, but that’s the only drawback. And considering how much money you’ll be saving by staying in a less crowded part of town, we think it’s well worth it and why we choose to stay here.
Here are some suggestions for where to stay:
If you do want to stay in the French Quarter, here are a couple of budget-friendly options.
We really love to stay in vacation homes when we travel but New Orleans has restrictions in place for certain areas. In the French Quarter, it is heavily restricted, and short-term holiday rentals in the Garden District are also illegal. When looking for vacation rentals in New Orleans check they have a permit to operate.
That said, there are some great places that are legal and have permits. This regal Victorian Mansion located in the historic Garden District will make you feel like you’re in Beauty and the Beast with its golds and blues (hey, it’s French!). Or this Historic Suite on the ground floor of the stately Lanaux Mansion allows you to stay in a piece of New Orleans history while being right where Frenchman Street meets the French Quarter! It doesn’t get much closer to the action than this.
In general, New Orleans is about as safe as any other major city. However, you’ll need to be alert and guard your valuables, especially if you plan on going out to the bars. Like any other large city in the United States (or the world), there are areas where crime is more rampant than others, so be sure to stick to highly touristed areas, especially at night.
Parts of the French Quarter, like the infamous Bourbon Street, can get rowdy with partygoers and drunk people after dark, so take extra precautions in the French Quarter during those hours, especially if you are alone.
As for wandering around during the day, as long as you keep your valuables and cash tucked away, stay vigilant, and don’t stray too far off the tourist trails, you should be absolutely fine! We’ve got more tips for staying safe while you travel in this post.
READ THIS POST The 14 Best Weekend Getaways in Colorado: from Hiking to Hot SpringsWhile you could definitely spend even more than 3 days in New Orleans, it’s enough time to explore the city’s main highlights, and you’ll be able to experience a lot of what New Orleans has to offer in three jam-packed days.
Another great thing for short trips to New Orleans is that most of the city’s neighborhoods are either walkable or accessible by streetcar. This means you won’t have to waste a lot of time traveling from place to place.
Instead, you’ll be able to spend the majority of your 3 days in the city on foot, wandering through the many historic neighborhoods the city has to offer. Just make sure to pack good walking shoes! Psst: These are our favorite travel shoes for men & women.
We recommend visiting during either April, May or October. April and May are lovely and warm, the perfect spring weather before the city becomes insanely hot and humid during the summer.
The city is also fairly empty during the off-season between October and January – and what better time than October to visit one of America’s most haunted cities?
Note that if you visit between October and January, you’ll want to bring warm clothing – New Orleans does get quite cold in the winter.
January through March is Mardi Gras – yup, the whole time – and the city will be busy, festive, and much more expensive. If you do plan to visit during Mardis Gras, you’ll want to book about a year in advance!
We visited New Orleans right after Mardi Gras during the first week of April, and the timing was perfect. There were still festive Mardi Gras decorations and plastic beads hanging off of fences and trees, but the crowds had cleared out and the prices had… er, slightly dropped (granted, we booked about 2 weeks before our trip, so that’s kinda on us).
The weather was mostly pleasantly sunny – although it was a bit colder than we expected and on one day, rainy (this rainy day guide to New Orleans came in handy).
We also visited in October for Halloween, and the weather was colder and rainier – but it just added to the overall spooky factor!
New Orleans is a foodie city, and the history and story of New Orleans are reflected in its incredibly unique food. You can get to know New Orleans by eating your way through it – which, incidentally, is our favorite way to get to know a place! Here are the must-eat New Orleans foods for your trip.
New Orleans is a foodie city and a party city, which is a recipe for truly excellent cocktails! The city is home to several famous and historic cocktails. Here are the ones you’ll want to try during your 3 days in New Orleans (start preparing your liver now).
On the very first day of your New Orleans itinerary, you’ll get to experience a little bit of everything that New Orleans has to offer: amazing food, fascinating history, chilling ghost stories, and a great party. (Also, yes: beignets.) Let’s go!
We’re hitting the ground running with this itinerary, so trust us: you’ll need to fuel up. French Truck Coffee in the Garden District is the perfect place to start your first morning in New Orleans. (If you’re not staying in the Garden District and need coffee ASAP, don’t worry: there are plenty of other locations, including one in the French Quarter).
French Truck is coffee snob-approved, with an excellent selection of single-origin beans and perfectly poured pour-overs. But even if you’re not a certified coffee snob, this is still the best place to try a classic New Orleans coffee, like a Cafe Au Lait made with chicory, or a sweet New Orleans Iced Coffee.
After you’ve taken care of your morning caffeine fix, it’s time to explore New Orleans’ most beautiful neighborhood: the Garden District. We used this self-guided Garden District tour to help us explore the neighborhood, starting with The Rink, a historic building that once housed an ice skating rink.
During the self-guided tour, you’ll get a taste for what the Garden District is known for, including a famous cemetery and several historic and noteworthy houses.
You’ll visit several of the homes that inspired Anne Rice’s vampire novels, plus a few celebrity residences, like the homes of Archie Manning, John Goodman and Sandra Bullock.
Oh, and most exciting (for us): the house that inspired the Disney Haunted Mansion! … Supposedly. We couldn’t find any actual facts to back that claim up. It’s definitely a mansion that’s haunted, though, so … that counts.
Since 1880, Commander’s Palace has been one of the most famous restaurants in New Orleans. They serve traditional creole food, including New Orleans style seafood dishes and Louisiana alligator grillades. They’ve also got an adorable Instagrammable exterior. This is the perfect place to stop for lunch after your self-guided tour of the Garden District!
Because it’s one of the most famous (and fancy) restaurants in New Orleans, it can be tough to get a table at Commander’s Palace in without a reservation.
However, on a weekday you can typically walk in for lunch without one (and enjoy their 25 cent weekday martini special). Just make sure you’re dressed nicely! Luckily, Jeremy was wearing a button-down and I had on a nice flowy skirt, so we waltzed right in without a reservation.
On the weekends, Commander’s Palace hosts a signature Jazz Brunch, but you’ll definitely need a reservation for that!
In addition to enjoying a few 25-cent martinis (there’s a limit of 3 per person, which we found … generous) we highly recommend taking advantage of the weekday lunch specials – they’re a fantastic deal.
We tried the famous Turtle Soup with sherry, strawberry shortcake, and the Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé with whiskey sauce. Also, it was Jeremey’s birthday week. so they brought us balloons and a Chef’s hat to celebrate. Aww!
The Garden District is beautiful, but let’s be honest: you can’t spend your whole first day in New Orleans outside of the French Quarter!
When people think of New Orlean’s most famous and historic neighborhood, two things usually come to mind: Bourbon Street and jazz music. And, like, yes – those are definitely fun after dark. But there are also tons of things to do in this area during the day!
We recommend spending some time wandering around the French Quarter taking it all in – and we have more tips for what to see later on in this itinerary – but we highly encourage you to hit up some of the most uniquely New Orleans attractions in the French Quarter. Namely, 3 very weird museums.
Listen, here’s the thing about these museums: These aren’t necessarily the most educational, detailed, in-depth, or academically researched museums.
What they are, is weird. They are weird museums, and they’re totally fun and cool and quirky and super weird.
We would actually encourage you to do some research beforehand to make the most of your visits – don’t expect to be educated just because a place has “museum” in the name. Just managing expectations here.
Note that this will be your only chance to visit the 3 weird museums on this itinerary, so if your curiosity is piqued, this is the day to do it!
Once you’ve gotten your fill of weird, quirky little museums and explored a little bit of the French Quarter – don’t worry, you’ll be back again in a couple days – it’s time to head to dinner.
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A New Orleans original, Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar was founded in 1989. The French Quarter location is an oyster bar that specializes in seafood dishes, including the classic Oysters Rockefeller.
Get their Taste of New Orleans combo, which includes jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, and red beans & rice. Oh, and their gumbo is excellent!
New Orleans is one of the most haunted cities in the USA. Also, for some reason, it’s full of vampires. Like … both the legendary kind, and the “this is just who I am, mom!” kind.
Anyway, we LOVE diving into all the weird, creepy stories lying just underneath the surface of New Orleans, so taking a Ghost Tour was high on our list of things to do in New Orleans!
There are a ton of NoLa ghost tours to choose from, but some of the ones we saw were HUGE, with 20-30 people all straining to hear their guide. Also, some tours include “ghost hunting” with various pieces of equipment, and we wanted to focus on storytelling and history.
The New Orleans Secrets ghost tour was the perfect balance of a small group with no paranormal ghost interactions! Our guide took us to a handful of places around the French Quarter, including the insanely creepy LaLaurie House, all the while telling us about New Orlean’s history – and the fires, plagues, and murders that shaped it. It was totally creepy and thrilling, and we highly recommend it!
Update: On our second trip to New Orleans, we booked this Voodoo Tour with the same tour company. It was led by a Voodoo practitioner and focused on accurate, validated historical information rather than hearsay and scare tactics.
We learned about how Voodoo is a religion rooted in slavery and the African Diaspora, and how there are actually a ton of similarities between Voodoo and Christianity. We also learned about the many misconceptions surrounding Voodoo, which are rooted in racism and fear.
The tour was respectful and fascinating, and we highly recommend it if your schedule allows for it!
The same company, New Orleans Secrets, also offers a guided Garden District Tour, and we’ll definitely be taking that on our next trip to NoLa!
For a little late-night adventure after your Ghost Tour, head to Cafe Du Monde to try their famous beignets! You’re not too terribly far, and there will be plenty of room to sit once you arrive.
Late night is the best time of day to visit Cafe Du Monde’s most popular location without any lines, and trust us – the pillowy, sugar-topped beignets will help you stay awake for your last activity of the evening (a cup of coffee or some milk probably wouldn’t hurt either).
After you’re fueled up on beignets, start walking – you’re heading out of the French Quarter and into the best pocket of New Orleans nightlife: Frenchmen’s!
When I say “the best place in New Orleans for music and nightlife,” what’s the first place that comes to mind?
If it’s Bourbon Street, you’re wrong, but you’re not alone – that’s a common tourist misconception. And tbh we’re not even mad about it because it means more tourists will keep the bars full there while you head here.
While Bourbon Street is like a big street party full of drunk strangers, Frenchmen’s is more like a medium-sized block party full of drunk friends.
You might see a 10-piece band playing out on the street for small crowds of dancing locals; you’ll probably hear jazz, soul, and funk music spilling out of neon-colored doorways; you might bum a cigarette and make new a local friend over drinks on the street; and you just might come home with a giant work of art.
Oh, that’s the other thing: Frenchmen’s is also home to the coolest night market in New Orleans: The Palace Market. It’s a rad art market featuring works from local artists ranging from sustainable bow ties to hand-crafted jewelry to screen-printed t-shirts to giant paintings, and it’s open until midnight!
There is nothing cooler than taking a break from watching live funk music to browse an art market at midnight, y’all.
After the art market closes and you’ve enjoyed as many drinks, cigarettes, and new friends as you can handle, call a Lyft and stumble back home to rest up for your day trip tomorrow.
I hope you had a blast yesterday because today is going to be … sobering. New Orleans is a lot of fun and throws a GREAT party, but it’s important to look back at the complex and dark history of New Orleans to understand how it became the vibrant and diverse place it is today.
Today, you’ll be visiting plantations. Not because they’re pretty – they’re too evil to be pretty.
But because plantations represent a huge, defining piece of New Orleans history. And because we owe that respect to the hundreds of thousands of people who were kidnapped and brought here from West Africa, enslaved, chained, beaten, and killed – and yet still managed to shape the culture of New Orleans.
Prepare yourself: today is going to be gut-wrenching. But I promise that after today, you’ll see New Orleans in a different – and deeper, and more complex – light.
READ THIS POST 33 Quirky Things To Do In Key West, Florida (& Travel Guide)Eat a quick, early breakfast at the Silver Whistle Cafe, which is located in the Pontchartrain Hotel. It’s a famous historic cafe known for being the hotspot where the city’s big wigs, like Frank Sinatra and Truman Capote, hung out to make deals and gossip.
Today, you can sit at the 10-top where they sat while drinking a cup of coffee and enjoying the cafe’s famous blueberry muffins.
If we’re being totally honest, chances are you won’t be hungry for lunch: plantations have a tendency to replace any hunger you might feel with a pit of sorrow in your stomach.
So fill up on breakfast, and we promise the wait will be worth it for dinner.
Although the New Orleans of today is a thriving and bustling city – despite being gutted by Hurricane Katrina just a decade ago – the history of the city is much darker. New Orleans – and the entirety of Louisiana – was built by enslaved people.
The wealth you see in the mansions of the Garden District or the elaborate facades of the French Quarter was paid for with money earned by kidnapping human beings from West Africa, enslaving them, and exploiting their labor.
It is an ugly history. And we feel that it’s not right to enjoy the beauty of New Orleans, to eat delicious Creole food and dance to jazz music, without acknowledging where that food and that music – and much of New Orleans’ flavor, soul, and spirit – came from.
We chose to visit a plantation to pay homage to the enslaved people who built and shaped this beautiful city.
There are 3 main plantations within an hour’s drive of New Orleans: Whitney Plantation, Oak Alley, and Laura Plantation. We cannot emphasize enough that the Whitney Plantation is the best choice for a plantation tour in New Orleans.
The Whitney Plantation is the only plantation in Louisiana that focuses exclusively on the lives of enslaved people. It honestly and academically portrays the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its effect on Louisiana while respectfully memorializing the thousands of lives that were lost.
During your tour, you’ll “meet” the enslaved children who once lived here, represented by beautiful and haunting statues throughout the property. The Children of the Whitney have names, and they tell their stories in their own words via recordings that were made in the early 19th century.
The Whitney Plantation features plaques and statues commemorating those quotes, as well as names and other known details about the thousands of enslaved people whose stories were once lost to history.
This tour is powerful, impactful, and emotional, and you should fully prepare yourself to cry. Allow yourself feel that sadness, and let it fuel your drive to prevent the injustices of racism and greed that led to the cruelty and inhumanity of slavery.
If you’ve got extra time and want to visit a second plantation, you can take a tour of the Laura Plantation.
The Laura Plantation was a Creole plantation, meaning that the owners were originally from France (and not Anglo-Saxon). It was also a women-run plantation, which was very rare at the time in the United States.
Memoirs from a plantation owner named Laura Locoul, which detailed what life was like in Antebellum Creole Louisiana for a wealthy white woman, were found in the plantation – hence its name.
The plantation was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 because its buildings and associated quarters, including the slave quarters, are still intact.
We didn’t have a chance to take a guided tour ourselves, but we’ve heard that it does cover the lives of the enslaved who lived there.
That said, it’s not as progressive or brutally honest as the Whitney Plantation.
You may notice that we’ve chosen to exclude the most popular New Orleans plantation, Oak Alley. This was intentional.
We did visit Oak Alley, and we felt that the lives of the enslaved were not portrayed accurately nor given enough focus.
The takeaway of the tour was not that slavery was a horrible chapter of history, but that the plantation was pretty.
One look at the guestbook told us everything we needed to know: page after page of comments that all said the same thing: “so beautiful. So pretty. Such wonderful trees.”
Yes, Oak Alley is very pretty, in a menacing way – but that’s not a good reason to visit a plantation.
Plantations are the USA’s equivalent of concentration camps or killing fields. Thousands of people were imprisoned and murdered here. Families were torn apart. Unspeakable cruelty was a daily necessity in order to maintain a status quo fed by greed and money.
And to downplay that harsh reality in favor of emphasizing the ~romance of the antebellum era is, we feel, infuriatingly dishonest and disrespectful.
Romanticizing the lives of the enslavers, with their lavish furnishings and luxurious homes, does a disservice to the lives lost during slavery, and perpetuates a myth about the antebellum area that we feel is dangerous and racist.
To be fair, Oak Alley has gotten a little bit better in recent years (since the Whitney Plantation opened its doors). They used to dress their employees in Antebellum clothing, which is a bit like visiting a Concentration Camp and going on a tour led by a uniformed Nazi.
They don’t do that anymore. So … that’s good.
We hope that the progressive trend continues, because we’d love to visit a “beautiful” plantation that’s brutally honest about the cost of such beauty. But until then, we can’t recommend visiting Oak Alley. The photo just isn’t worth it.
After a long and emotional day, Creole comfort food is just what you need. Gris-Gris, located in the Garden District, serves traditional New Orleans food with an elevated twist.
The owner worked at the famed Commander’s Palace for several years before opening Gris-Gris in 2018. The restaurant quickly became the most exciting and popular place to eat in town – which is why you’ll either want to make a reservation in advance or plan to wait for a seat at the bar upstairs. We awkwardly hovered at the bar for about 15 minutes before two seats opened up.
Unlike most of the historic and traditional restaurants in New Orleans, Gris-Gris features a modern open kitchen layout where you can see the chefs preparing your food. We’re the kind of people who watch Chopped while we eat, so we enjoy a good cooking show with our meal!
Of course, if you sit at the bar upstairs, you’ll have to settle for watching your bartender instead, but you’ll get a chance to walk through the kitchen if you visit the bathroom.
Featuring breathtaking views of New Orleans’ Garden District, Downtown, and the Mississippi River, Hot Tin is a chic bar on the roof of the Pontchartrain Hotel.
The bar was designed to model the home of Tennessee Williams, a famed New Orleans playwright who was said to be living in the Pontchartrain Hotel while he wrote his classic, A Streetcar Named Desire.
If you time things just right, this is the perfect place to watch the sun setting over the New Orleans skyline, cocktail in hand.
For your last full day in New Orleans, you’ll be heading back to the French Quarter to take a food tour (just in case there are still a few items on your New Orleans food list that you haven’t checked off), explore the French Quarter, enjoy some live jazz, and finish your trip on a sweet note with more beignets.
I know we didn’t start with coffee today, because it feels a little redundant at this point, but let’s be real here: you’re gonna want to get coffee first.
Once you’re caffeinated, head to the French Market.
The French Market is the historic center of the French Quarter, and it’s a critical part of the story of the founding of New Orleans. The French Market actually dates back to the Choctaw Indians, who ran a prosperous trading market here.
When the Europeans showed up, they were like “Oh wow, this IS a great location for a market. So we’re just gonna kick y’all out and stick our own city right here and pretend it was ours all along,” and that’s why an ancient Native American trading post is now called the French Market. Isn’t American history fun? That was sarcasm, in case it wasn’t super clear.
Anyway, depressingly representative of the history of the Americas or not, the French Market today is a pretty rad place to visit.
There’s delicious food, every manner of souvenir – this is the BEST spot to shop for edible souvenirs like hot sauce, spices, and beignet mix – and a huge selection of wares handmade by local artists and craftspeople.
Walk through the giant open-air market and you’ll see artists working behind their booths, meet self-published authors selling their books, and be tempted to try everything from alligator jerky to Crawfish pie.
Oh, and something that might look familiar: Cafe Du Monde, except now it’s during the day so it will be massively crowded. Good thing you already checked that one off your list!
It’s definitely tempting to fill up here, but don’t eat too much, because later on you’re taking a food tour!
Not gonna lie, the Doctor Gumbo food & history tour we booked was one of the attractions we were most excited about. And it’s not just because we are food-obsessed foodies who literally travel just to eat stuff in cool places.
New Orleans is famous for a huge and bewildering variety of unique and delicious dishes, and we were so excited to sample them all – and learn about the history of New Orleans through the lens of its food!
Food tours are the most efficient way to combine sight-seeing, eating as much as possible, and learning a bunch of interesting stuff, and we try to take one everywhere we go. (We love food tours so much, we even started our own food tour company in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky!)
The Doctor Gumbo food tour is said to be the best food tour in New Orleans, and our high expectations were certainly met! During our 4-hour walking tour, we sampled everything from muffulettas to gumbo to po-boys at some of the city’s most famous historic restaurants and neighborhood dives, and learned about how every ingredient in Creole and Cajun cooking tells a story about the history of New Orleans.
We definitely recommend this tour!
After your food tour, you’ll have a few hours to kill in between all that food you just ate and dinner, so we recommend getting your final fill of the French Quarter to round out your trip. There are a few more must-see spots that we recommend visiting!
You can start by heading to Jackson Square and the St. Louis Cathedral, which is really the heart of the French District. Named after Andrew Jackson, there’s a statue of the namesake president on a horse in the center of the square that’s one of the iconic symbols of New Orleans.
At Jackson Square, you can also visit the Cabildo, which is a museum/exhibition hall home to lots of artifacts from the area.
While you’re there, stop by the Pirates Alley, a small, hidden alleyway that’s the source of many of the city’s legends. It was once home to Andrew Jackson and William Faulkner, and no one really knows where the name came from. Now, it’s home to lots of small shops and cafes that reside in picturesque brick buildings.
Once you’ve worked up an appetite again (though, it’s actually a blessing if you’re not too hungry, because dinner tonight will be on the pricey side) head to Bourbon Street!
Galatoire’s is a Bourbon Street institution and one of the most famous restaurants in town – it’s the one spot on Bourbon Street that even locals recommend eating. Its original owner was from France and infused French culture and tradition into his restaurant.
Galatoire’s has served up Creole and French cuisines for over 100 years, and its reputation as one of the best and nicest places in town precedes it.
Galatoire’s has steadfastly preserved that reputation by keeping prices high and insisting on a rigid dress code, even if the interior feels a little more “old-fashioned ice cream parlor” than “high-end luxury restaurant.”
Men are required to wear a suit jacket, so Jeremy packed his Bluffworks travel suit, which is the perfect, lightweight, wrinkle-resistant travel suit. We couldn’t figure out if there was a specific dress code for women – there’s nothing on the site – so I just put on my reddest lipstick and hoped for the best.
If it all sounds a bit stuffy and old-fashioned, you’re not wrong: it’s the kind of place where the check is decisively put down in front of whoever appears to be the man of the table.
And then put down in front of the man again, even after I made a big show about reaching for it. Which like, not surprised, but always a little irritated.
But low-key sexism aside, the food here lives up: it’s rich, heavy, French, and delicious. The seafood dishes are amazing, like the Crab Maison and the Oysters Rockefeller, but you’ll also find more traditional French dishes like foie gras and escargot.
This is definitely a splurge, but in a foodie town like New Orleans, splurges are well worth it!
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Did we mention we love beignets and can never have enough of them? Okay, great, because your 3 days in New Orleans is going to end the way it started: with a delicious beignet nightcap.
No matter which bar you end up in, you’re just a few minutes away from Cafe Beignet on Bourbon Street.
To be frank, we didn’t think the beignets were quite as perfectly pillowy as the ones from Cafe du Monde – they’re more on the dense side, which hey, personal preference – but they’re still delicious and the adorable, Instagrammable atmosphere of the place definitely makes up for it.
Savor your fluffy morsels of sugary heaven as you say your goodbyes to New Orleans … and then stumble out to head to the next bar. We won’t judge.
Here’s a quick summary of our 3 day New Orleans Itinerary!
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
3 days in New Orleans is the perfect amount of time to see the best of the city – but it will definitely leave you wanting to come back! What are you most eager to see, do, or eat in New Orleans? Drop us a comment below!
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Disclaimer: During our trip, Visit New Orleans provided us with complimentary passes to a few New Orleans attractions. All opinions, suggestions that you should eat your weight in fried seafood, and bad jokes are 100% our own and totally not their fault.
Thank you for being an ally. Reading your post warmed my heart. I’ll surely check out some of these spots on my next trip to New Orleans.
Finally, content worth reading. It’s always nice to find posts like this one. This post is very helpful.Thank-you so much for sharing.We did a two day trip and still packed in quite a few things from your list. Thank you so much for all your suggestions and honest tips. I truly appreciate it. Really came in handy. I need to go again for everything I missed.
Thank you sooo much for all the information. I have been to NOLA once and looking forward to going again. October is my month, since I love all hunted and macabre this is place I want to explore. I will be there on Halloween, I am sooo excited, really looking forward to this trip. Thank you for all the info once again
Our most recent trip to NoLa was during Halloween! It’s a great place to visit in October, you’re going to have an amazing time! Just be sure to pack a raincoat & umbrella, it rained quite a bit during our trip 🙂
I feel the need to clarify your plantation/slave comments. Slavery was and remains today, a vile and reprehensible practice. But just as the plantations need to be exposed for this horrid practice, most people do not understand that this was an accepted method for labor for centuries. But what most people do not learn is that there were, indeed, black slave owners as well. In Louisiana, there were six recorded black plantation owners, one of them being Mrs. C. Richards and her son. Records show they owned more than 150 slaves in 1860. And then there was Antoine Dubuclet; born a free man to free parents. He took their small Cedar Grove sugar plantation and, by obtaining more than 100 slaves, had a plantation valued at $264,000 at the time, and was much wealthier than the majority of white people in the area. During Reconstruction, he served as the state treasurer of Louisiana. I point this out because today, most people assume only white people owned slaves. In the south most people who had any appreciable wealth owned slaves. On average, both black and white slave owners had an average of one to five slaves. At one time, one-fourth of the black population of New Orleans owned at least one slave. It was an acceptable practice in many areas of the world. When you consider slavery can be traced back to Ancient Greece, you may begin to understand how embedded this system is in world history. In the agrarian south, plantations only existed because of slave labor. The south did not have the immigrant labor to depend on as did the north. So this vile custom became an accepted method for the back-breaking work needed on plantations. Also of note, many slaves, although there are no records to document exactly how many, were sold to slave traders by their own tribes, most usually when they had been found guilty of various tribal crimes. It was also common practice at the time to sell prisoners taken during battles with other rival tribes. If needed, Africans would also sell their domestic slaves to the slave traders. While others were victims of kidnapping, the entire slave trade was by no means funded by this atrocity. During the 17-19 centuries, it was not considered wrong for African tribes to sell people per the reasons above. After years of study and research [my graduate thesis was based on primary records from a cotton plantation in Alabama], I have found that most people are not aware of all the facts regarding this horrid practice and that all the facts are not always talked about. Please feel free to check the facts I have noted. The depth of slavery has so many components and is a very complicated subject to understand let alone discuss. Sadly, slavery is still practiced in areas of Africa and even today, the abusive practice cannot be eradicated. Hopefully, the time has come when people stop glorifying antebellum life; when we know better, we do better.
Thank you for the history lesson, Susan! That’s really fascinating, and new information to me. You might be interested to hear that at the Whitney Plantation, there’s a fantastic and very thoughtfully curated museum that does speak to some of the more nuanced aspects of slavery, including the practice of African tribes selling people to slave traders, as well as things like slave rebellions and the geographic differences between enslaved peoples – a much more detailed and informative coverage of slavery than I’d ever learned about in history classes or at school. I agree that with knowledge and understanding, we can work to eradicate and address the horrors of slavery, past and present.
“Romanticizing the lives of the enslavers, with their lavish furnishings and luxurious homes, does a disservice to the lives lost during slavery, and perpetuates a myth about the antebellum area that we feel is dangerous and racist.” Thank you for choosing to highlight this. Its sad that this piece of New Orleans history has been conveniently missing from the narrative and guides floating around on the internet. Yours was my favorite guide to read before we visit.
NOLA is my favorite city to visit in the US. I’ve come for many years to Jazz Fest and French Quarter Fest. But I want to introduce you to the BEST way to learn about the city: Bike Tour. I’ve taken tow EXCELLENT tours via Buzz Nola (a block from the French Quarter in the CBD (Central Business District a.k.a “Downtown”). The first was city-wide; the second was the Garden District tour. With both of these you get to see WAY more than any walking tour, and the excellent tour guides spout history and tourist recommendations throughout It’s EASY riding on nice bikes on roads with little traffic and specific bike paths. I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS MORE. Also, one “dining” option that should not be missed is a muffuletta from Central market in the French Quarter (very hear Cafe duMonde). Get there early cuz there is usually a line for lunch, and beware that this is a HUGE sandwich but you can get halves and quarters.
Most years Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is in February and the latest it ever is is first week of March. March is one of the nicest months weather-wise in NOLA and best times to visit in my opinion!
Thanks so much for the awesome tips, getting ready for our first New Orleans trip in November. Anyway, you mention Doctor Gumbo as your favorite food tour, and your links go to what appears to be another operator?
Hey Bob, we actually linked to the same Doctor Gumbo tour we took! We just linked to it on GetYourGuide, which is basically like a vetted marketplace for tours. It’s a really handy site to use to find & book tours, and we love that you can see reviews from other people who have booked the tour to get an idea of what they thought, too. You can book the Doctor Gumbo tour through GetYourGuide (and we get a little bit of commission if you do at no additional cost, which we greatly appreciate) or you can book direct through Doctor Gumbo – it’s the exact same tour either way. Hope that helps explain!
Thanks so much for the shout out! I have to admit that it’s always nerve-wracking to find out after-the-fact that someone with a big voice was on our tour. But as we see it, our guests save up their vacation time and money — often times, for years — to come see New Orleans, so we better give every tour our very best energy and effort! I’m happy your experience was no exception. 😀 You have some great insider tips in your blog post — kudos for delving deeper than just Bourbon Street! Lol. And I’m glad to read that your 3-day trip was enough to tease you into coming back for more. New Orleans certainly has a way about her, and often times people don’t realize just HOW MUCH there is to see and do (and EAT!) until they get here! As we say in New Orleans…laissez les bon temps rouler!!
I’m happy you made it to NOLA – and that Frenchmen Street is on your “perfect” list! It’s definitely one of the most magical places in the most magical city in the US. But shhhh….let’s not let too many people in on it, lest the Bourbon Street crowd turns its bleary eyes toward it, heehee.
I’m from Nola and I love y’all’s blog so I was excited to see y’all’s take on the city. Wasn’t disappointed! Usually I kinda turn my nose up at guides to the Big Easy but this one is solid. (Galatoire’s is my family’s favorite!) If y’all get the chance to go back I’d check out the Tiki scene (Latitude 29, Cane & Table, etc.), Magazine St. boutiques uptown, and some of the Irish pubs & dive bars downtown.
Oh wow, a local’s stamp of approval is the highest compliment!! Thank you so much, we loved visiting your incredible city
New Orleans has been on our minds for some time now. This post is very helpful. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Oak Alley – plain pretty vs. complex history. Really appreciate! We didn’t know about the ghost part, sounds interesting! Was it scary? And oh, yes food will be among our top priorities whenever we plan to visit this interesting city.
Nice post! Thanks for sharing!Visited NOLA for the first time, first week in Feb this year. We stayed in the Garden District and loved it! Not into crowds and bars, more into culture and history. Can’t get enough of the Garden District, we walked it twice and still didn’t get enough, hhahah. One point of interest for us was to see the house of Anne Rice. NOLA is truly a mystical and enchanting city, not to mention the old school real deal food! One of the must do-s that wasn’t on the writer’s itinerary was Central Grocery and Deli. I actually searced for this famous sandwich, Mufulletta, and found them, the originators! We also took a ride outside of the main tourist areas for fried chicken at Willie Mae’s. A must see is also St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, we took a carriage ride from/through the French Quarter to the cemetery with a guided tour there. So interesting, creepy and unique to NOLA, a must do if you’re into macabre. We took a tour to Oak Alley Plantation, where Interview with the Vampire was filmed. It was a fun and interesting narrated tour on a bus, very interesting ride and informative. So much history and gave a real insight to life back in those days. Amazing it’s still standing. We enjoyed a mint julep there as well. After the tour that day we tried fried alligator for the first time at a place called Cochon, it’s was fried and tossed in a garlic sauce, pretty good! Took the St.Charles Street Car back to the Garden District which was fun too. We definitely are going back to make it to Frenchmen’s Street at night for jazz , take a cooking class and a riverboat tour… we are from San Diego and used to fog but still entranced by the thick heavy fog rolling off the Mississippi … it’s real just like you see in the movies … Love NOLA
So appreciate how you wrote this post, Lia. Thank you for highlighting the plantations and some of the darker history of the region— such an important aspect of visiting any location. Will definitely explore New Orleans one day, it’s on the list!
I love love love NOLA, and omg reading the food on your posts makes me want to go back so bad. You can never get enough of the food there, specially those heavenly bites of beignets!! haha….am definitely planning another trip now. Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
Love this post! I’m visiting New Orleans soon, so I’m definitely saving this 😀I want to eat everything on the list! I’ve never been to New Orleans so this was a great guide for me. I want to go more than ever now!
I LOVE New Orleans. I have been 5 times and have eaten at most of the places you mentioned but yay there’s a few I didn’t know about that I will definitely try next time and I’ve never done the food tour there! Great idea. You’ve just reminded me that I need a trip back here.
I did a lot of these things, but I still have more sights to see! And more food to eat 🙂 You’re making me want to go back to New Orleans!
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In 2016 we quit our jobs, put our stuff in storage, and took off on a (disastrous) year-long honeymoon. Today, we share down-to-earth travel tips from our many (mis)adventures on our blog and podcast!
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