New Orleans

New Orleans has completely recovered from Katrina in the tourist areas. In many ways the city has improved since "the storm" with more restaurants, entrepreneurial businesses, and even a new food truck movement.

The uber-hip and artsy Bywater neighborhood just downriver from the French Quarter is gaining new bars and restaurants and boutiques all the time since "the storm." Some of the cooler spots include Bon Castor boutique arts and crafts, Maurepas Fine Foods, and Lost Love Lounge for drinks and down-home New Orleans Vietnamese chow in the back. Mimi's is the local favorite for late night drinks and upstairs casual dining and dancing. The Orange Couch is great for coffee and roaming chickens. The art scene along adjacent St. Claude Avenue is the most recent cutting edge gallery collective to open in the city.

If you go Uptown, Freret Street between Napoleon and Jefferson Aveneues now has a new scene that includes the mixology bar Cure, gourmet dog joints Dat Dog, gourmet hamburgers at Company Burger, gournet cakes and "cake pops" at Pure Cake. The Hi-Hat offers incredible modern southern comfort food with local fresh ingredients, and the bar makes some of the most innovative and fresh-tasting home-made mixology cocktails of anywhere in the city!

Where do you begin with food and wine in New Orleans? The choices are endless! Where ever you go in the city, there is guaranteed to be a great wine bar and food selection. With its deep rich French and Spanish heritage and love for great food, New Orleans has an endless selection of places. Even for locals that go out to eat every weekend, it is easy to visit a different place every week, and try something completely new and adventurous!
The city's food scene reflects its rich history and also a new wave of adventurous chefs. So you will find the classic Creole dishes for which the city is known. Creole refers to the local French-Spanish-African-Native American Catholic culture that developed in the colonial period of the 1700s. Creole food is mainly a mixture of French, Spanish, African, and Native American styles of cooking, with gumbo being the ultimate example of this good genre. Creole sauces tend to be French-inspired butter-based. To the confusion of many tourists, authentic cajun food is not found in New Orleans, but is best found in rural areas or Cajun towns to the west like Lafayette.
In the past ten to twenty years, new chefs have been creating contemporary variations of older dishes, and also placing an emphasis on fresh-local ingredients. Given New Orleans' proximity to surrounding fisheries, all the seafood in the city is fresh daily. The fact that there is a year-round growing season means that most vegetable are also locally grown. And the city enjoys a citrus season in the winter, a strawberry season in the spring, and pecan season in the Fall - all of which are used liberally in local restaurants by inventive chefs.

New Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz. So it has an amazing music scene. But it also has an extremely vibrant visual arts scene too! For music, most locals avoid Bourbon street, and instead hang out on lower Frenchmen Street in the Marigny neighborhood below the French Quarter, where a 3 block stretch of clubs play all varieties of music in the city: traditional jazz, modern jazz, brass band funk, rhythm and blues, blues, Afro-Caribbean music, and any combination of the above. Even beyond Frenchmen, locals hear music at the Maple Leaf in Uptown, Chickie Wah Wah in Mid City, and Vaughn's in the Bywater. For a listing check out the local Offbeat Magazine or download their app.
For art lovers, the Ogden Southern Museum of Art is always inspiring, as is the New Orleans Museum of Art, which is accesible by the red street car. The first saturday of every month, galleries on Julia Street and Magazine street host special exhibit openings. St. Claude Avenue in the Bywater neighborhood hosts gallery openings during the second saturday of every month. St.Claude has emerged as the newest gallery district, and is an art scene that has transformed the neighborhood into a center of creative arts in the city.

New Orleans has many beautiful historic neighborhoods that are delightful to explore. The city has a great record of historic preservation and many of the oldest neighborhoods have an incredible collection of architectural styles from French and Spanish colonial, to antebellum American, and Victorian.
The French Quarter and the Garden District in Uptown are the two most popular neighborhoods to explore, and are easy to get around by foot. Magazine Street from the Lower Garden District up to Audubon Park is also a great street for walking, shopping and sightseeing. Any hotel can provide maps that will help guide you to some of the more interesting sites. And plenty of new tourism apps also provide helpful information on the sites of the city.
Outside of the city, river road - the road that is adjacent to the Mississippi River on both sides - is great for sightseeing as well. And for nature lovers, the wetland regions surrounding the city are enchanting and beautiful.

New Orleans, like Las Vegas, is not generally considered a family-friendly tourist town. But there are plenty of fun and educational activities for families with children.
While the media portrays Carnival as a flesh-obsessed debauchery festival, the truth is that outside of Bourbon street it is all about families and children. Carnival parade routes are lined with special ladders that have seats attached to the top for children to view and catch throws. So Carnival is actually one of the greatest thrills for local children.
Walking through some of the historic neighborhoods is always an educational and entertaining adventure that families can enjoy together. The upper part of Bourbon Street (100-700 blocks) is not generally considered appropriate for young children because of the the strip clubs, but all the other parts of the French Quarter are appropriate, charming and beautiful.
Local sporting events such as Saints (NFL), Pelicans (NBA), and Zephyrs (AAA) baseball games are great family events too. With all the playgrounds and parks around the city, there is always a place to let young children get some energy out.

New Orleans is surrounded by beautiful and enchanting wetlands comprised of brackish water estuary lakes, fresh water swamps (wet forests), and salt water marshes (wet grasslands). The city has some of the greatest sport fishing opportunties of any major metropolitan area in the U.S.. There are plenty of fishing guides in the surrounding towns of St. Bernard, St. Tammany, Plaquemines, Jefferson, and Lafourche Parishes. For eco-tours of the wetlands, a number of swamp tours offer a chance to explore this unique eco-system. Honey Island Swamp Tours in Slidell is often considered to be one of the most knowledgable on environmental issues, flora and fauna. Locals generally avoid supporting tours that feed alligators.

For those who love to shop, there are several cool stretches in New Orleans that will satisfy the shopping urge. New Orleans is a city that does not cater to the big chains, and there are lots of cool boutiques and small shops throughout the city.
New Orleans has a style that would be described as understated sophistication. It doesn't have the big hair and bling of the rest of the South, and is super comfortable in its own skin. There is a hint of classic preppy, sophisticated style and hipster throughout the city, but locals generally are cool with whatever you wear as long as you own it and its got some sense of style.

New Orleans has incredible options for nightlife dining and music. While most tourists are familiar with Bourbon Street, locals avoid it, and prefer to go to clubs that feature local music and authentic food. In general, most locals will patronize Frenchmen Street for local music. But they also patronize many local clubs in the Uptown, Marigny, Treme, Bywater, and MidCity neighborhoods.