In New Orleans the best hours are after dark. Book those first.
Which cemetery tour actually gets you through the gate. What a morning on the bayou costs once the pickup is included. Whether the Natchez is worth it with dinner or without. Reviews of every tour you can book in New Orleans.
New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · from $27
New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Option
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · from $58
Adults-Only New Orleans Ghost, Crime, Voodoo, and Vampire Tour
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $37
New Orleans Food Walking Tour of the French Quarter with Small-Group Option
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $75
Four bookings a first trip to New Orleans hangs off.
A lap of the Quarter after dark, a boat into the cypress, the river at dusk and the road upstream. What each costs and what the people who took it say.
01The first nightNew Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking TourGhosts, voodoo and vampires in one loop of the French Quarter. More travellers take this than anything else in the city.
02The bayou morningNew Orleans Swamp and Bayou Boat Tour with TransportationA covered boat through the cypress and Spanish moss with the ride out of town included. Go early, before the heat sits down.
03The river at duskNew Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner OptionA band playing on the deck of a working steam sternwheeler. Dinner is an add-on, and the evening sailing is the one to want.
04The River Road dayOak Alley Plantation Tour with Transportation from New OrleansA quarter mile of live oaks upstream at Oak Alley, coach from the Quarter included. Out most of the day, back for dinner.
Ghost walk, voodoo history or a cemetery gate. Pick your night in New Orleans.
The haunted trade is this city’s biggest and its most crowded. Four kinds of evening, what it costs to join each one, and which part of town it covers.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour
Ghost walksLamplit Quarter streets and the houses behind the stories.
Voodoo historyCongo Square, Marie Laveau, and shops still doing business.
Cemetery visitsTombs above ground, with the guide who can open the gate.
True crimeAxeman, mafia and the Rampart Street cases, told on the spot.
All 193 nights out after dark →
The Quarter, the Garden District, the tombs, the swamp and the road upriver.
New Orleans is small enough to walk and the best of it still sits an hour outside. Six places the tours actually go, and the day to book in each.
The New Orleans days and nights travellers take most.
The whole New Orleans list →What this city books more than anything else, and the thing that earns each one its place.
1
New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour
Walk the French Quarter after dark with guides such as Spooky Rob, Lisa, Logan, or Catie, hearing tales of Madame LaLaurie, the Casket Girls, voodoo, vampires, and old medical practices. The 1-hour-45-minute route includes Jackson Square, the Pharmacy Museum, and Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar.
From · $27
Read our review →2
New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Option
from $58
3
Adults-Only New Orleans Ghost, Crime, Voodoo, and Vampire Tour
from $37
4
New Orleans Food Walking Tour of the French Quarter with Small-Group Option
from $75
5
New Orleans Swamp and Bayou Boat Tour with Transportation
from $70
6
New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise
from $43
7
New Orleans City Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $51
8
New Orleans Airboat Ride
from $59
Half an hour past Canal Street the road gives out and the cypress starts.
Airboats run flat across Barataria at speed. The covered boats idle through Manchac looking for alligators and the odd raccoon in the branches. In front of the city the paddlewheelers work the Mississippi with a band on deck. All three collect you from the Quarter.
The plantation houses are an hour upstream, and they do not tell the same story.
Oak Alley has the photograph everyone comes for. Whitney tells it from the quarters instead of the porch, and it is the one that stays with people. Laura runs on a Creole family’s own records and Destrehan is the oldest standing. Most coaches leave the Quarter before nine.
Gumbo, beignets and a Sazerac poured where the drink was invented.
Food walks work the Quarter and the Marigny in three hours and about five stops. A demonstration class ends as lunch with the recipes on paper. The cocktail crawls treat the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz as local history, which here they are.
What a day out in New Orleans actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A guided lap of the Quarter still costs less than lunch on Bourbon Street.
Quarter walks, cemetery visits, audio tours and the daytime jazz sailings.
Airboats, dinner cruises, cooking classes and the coach up the River Road.
Private guides, helicopter loops and the long combined swamp and plantation days.
Three things that happen in New Orleans and nowhere else.
Every city has a walking tour and a boat ride. Tombs built above the ground, a religion with its own queen, and a brass band on a steam sternwheeler belong to this one.
Tombs built above the water
The water table sits a few feet under this city, so the dead were laid in stone houses on the surface instead of below it. St Louis No. 1 is a mile of them packed into one block, and since 2015 nobody gets through the gate without a licensed guide. The vaults are still in use, a year and a day at a time.
- 1St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,941 reviews
- 2Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour in New Orleans★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,685 reviews
- 3New Orleans City Tour: French Quarter, Garden District & Cemetery★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,209 reviews
Voodoo, still working
Enslaved Africans were allowed to gather in Congo Square on Sundays, and the drumming there carried a religion into the city and held it. Marie Laveau ran it out of a cottage on St Ann Street in the 1800s and her tomb still collects offerings. The shops on Rampart are not museums; people go in to buy.
- 1New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 12,856 reviews
- 2Adults-Only New Orleans Ghost, Crime, Voodoo, and Vampire Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,545 reviews
- 3New Orleans Adults-Only Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,291 reviews
A brass band with somewhere to be
Jazz here was never a concert first. It came out of funeral processions, Congo Square and the dance halls, and the second line still steps in behind the band on a Sunday afternoon. The Natchez keeps a band playing on the top deck, and Frenchmen Street gets going around nine.
- 1New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 7,533 reviews
- 2New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 5,334 reviews
- 3Evening Steamboat Jazz Cruise + Optional Dinner★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 4,548 reviews
Four New Orleans bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be sorted over coffee at the hotel. These four run on gate access, boat timetables and a season that takes the whole town with it.
- 01St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking TourThe gate is shut to anyone without a licensed guide, and the companies work to a fixed list of entry slots.
- 02New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner OptionOne boat, a few sailings a day, and the dinner seating fills long before the deck does.
- 03Whitney Plantation Tour with Transportation from New OrleansWhitney is guided-only and caps its groups, so the morning departures out of the city go first.
- 04New Orleans Mardi Gras World Behind-the-Scenes TourCarnival takes over the calendar and the hotels with it. Anything running in those two weeks is spoken for months out.
When the New Orleans afternoon turns to steam and the sky opens at three.
June to September the heat is heavy by noon and a thunderstorm arrives most afternoons, usually for half an hour. The local answer is old and it works. Go out early, spend the middle of the day indoors with the air on, and let the streets cool before the evening walk.
By neighbourhood and landmark
A first New Orleans trip, run the way the locals would run it.
The bayou
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