Neighborhoodsįrench Quarter: This is the city's oldest and best known neighborhood. But Cruise Critic recommends you limit your wanderings to well-lit, highly populated streets. Suggestions are clustered on one side of the Mississippi River and don't extend beyond the Industrial Canal or into New Orleans East they give visitors access to places the typical tourist might not hear about.Įditor's note: These areas of New Orleans are thriving because they were largely untouched during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Here's a guide to where the locals hang out, eat, drink and shop. You have a week or maybe only a weekend, and, yet, you want to enjoy the city as if you had a year. Plus a full year gives you time to eat at many of the city's restaurants, wander the historic cemeteries or live in a Creole cottage or a shotgun house in true local style.īut you don't have a year. (The date differs each year.) In that year, you also get the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, two weekends in the spring that showcase a variety of great music. 6) to Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras day.
In one year, you get the full Carnival season, from Twelfth Night (Jan. To truly experience New Orleans, you need at least a year.
