Everybody books the ghost tour. Then the city starts.
Which cemetery walk actually gets you inside the gates. What the airboat out to the Manchac costs. Whether Oak Alley or Whitney is the plantation day you want. Reviews of every tour you can book in New Orleans.
Four nights and days that carry a first trip to New Orleans.
The bookings a Quarter-and-bayou itinerary hangs off. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first nightNew Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking TourCathedral shadows, the pharmacy museum, the Lalaurie house. The walk everyone does first, and the one that sets the week up.
02The morning afterSt. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking TourSt. Louis No. 1 is locked to the public. You go in with a licensed guide or you look through the fence.
03The day outNew Orleans Swamp and Bayou Boat Tour with TransportationAn hour west of the Quarter the road runs out and the cypress starts. Alligators, herons, and a flat-bottomed boat.
04The last eveningNew Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner OptionA paddlewheeler off the Toulouse Street wharf with a band on the deck and the skyline going gold behind it.
Six New Orleans days, and the best thing to book in each.
The Quarter on foot, the oaks and iron of the Garden District, tombs standing above the water table, a bayou an hour west, the River Road houses, and a brass band on a deck. Pick the one you came for.
Cemetery gate, haunted mansion, or a voodoo priestess. Pick your night.
More of this city is sold after sunset than before it. Three kinds of New Orleans night, what it costs to join each one, and what you actually get out of the dark.
The New Orleans tours more travellers take than any other.
Every New Orleans review →Ghost walks, jazz decks and airboats, in the order the city actually books them.
1
New Orleans Premier Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour
Explore New Orleans after dark on a 1-hour-45-minute French Quarter walk filled with ghost, voodoo, vampire, and true history stories.
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
River Road and the Manchac: the day New Orleans sends you out of town.
An hour up the Mississippi the sugar houses stand under their oaks, and an hour the other way the road ends in cypress and black water. Both are half-day runs with a pickup from the Quarter, and both fill early in spring.
The Quarter is thirteen blocks. The walk is the whole point.
Everything in the Quarter →
Carriageways, hidden courtyards, the pharmacy that sold leeches, and the corner where the Absinthe House still pours. These three carry more travellers than anything else inside the Vieux Carre.
Two hours on foot, before the heat
Iron balconies, the Ursuline convent, Jackson Square and the stories behind the shuttered doors. Go at nine, when the Quarter still smells of bread rather than beer.
Gumbo, po-boys and a praline stop
Five or six stops between Decatur and Dauphine, with someone explaining the difference between Creole and Cajun while you eat both. Lunch is included whether you planned it or not.
Sazerac, Pimm’s cup, and the oldest bar
The cocktail was arguably invented here and the city has never let anyone forget it. Four bars, four drinks, and the history of each glass as it lands.
Uptown is where New Orleans went when it wanted to be American.
White-columned porches, Anne Rice’s old house, and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 behind its wall. The St. Charles streetcar runs the length of it for the price of a bottle of water, so what you are paying a guide for is the stories.
Every uptown walk →
What a day in New Orleans actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good share of the best nights here come in under the cost of dinner on Frenchmen Street.
Ghost walks, cemetery visits, food crawls, self-guided audio and the Quarter on foot.
The half-day runs: swamp boats with pickup, Oak Alley, jazz dinner cruises, carriage nights.
Private guides, two-plantation days and the small-group boats that skip the crowds.
Three things that only happen in New Orleans.
Old towns, riverboats and haunted houses turn up all over the South. Tombs built above the water table, a Sunday parade that anyone can join, and a religion that survived in a public square do not.
The Above-Ground Tombs
Dig two feet down here and you hit water, so the dead were housed instead of buried. Families own the tombs, the Louisiana heat does the work of a crematorium inside them, and a year and a day later the remains go down into the caveau to make room for the next. St. Louis No. 1 has been closed to unaccompanied visitors since 2015, which is why every visit is a booked one.
- 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
The Second Line
A brass band leads, the family and the club walk behind it, and everyone who falls in on the pavement is the second line. It began as burial-society parading and it still runs most Sundays somewhere uptown, route announced late and changed often. On the river, the same horns play the deck of a paddlewheeler for people who would never find the parade.
- 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
New Orleans Voodoo
On Sundays under the French code, enslaved people were permitted to gather in what is now Congo Square, and the drumming that happened there fed both the religion and the music that came after it. Marie Laveau was a hairdresser and a devout Catholic as well as the city’s best-known practitioner. The tours that treat it as history rather than a haunted house are the ones worth the money.
- 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
Four New Orleans bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be sorted from a barstool the night before. These four run on locked gates, boat schedules and a calendar that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking TourThe archdiocese closed the cemetery to unaccompanied visitors, so a licensed guide is the only way through the gate. Small groups, fixed slots.
- 02Swamp Boat Ride and Oak Alley Plantation Tour from New OrleansThe house runs timed entry and the transport runs one round trip a day from the Quarter. Miss the pickup and there is no second bus.
- 03Whitney Plantation Tour with Transportation from New OrleansWhitney admits a limited number each day and closes on Tuesdays. It is the one River Road house told from the quarters rather than the porch.
- 04New Orleans Steamboat Natchez Jazz Cruise with Dinner OptionThe paddlewheelers sail to a printed timetable off the wharf, and the dinner seatings sell out well before the deck does.
When it hits 95 degrees and the sky opens at three.
Summer here does two things. The heat index makes an open walk unbearable by noon, and a thunderstorm arrives most afternoons, hard and brief. Both have the same answer: walk early, then get under a roof. Kitchens, museums, a cocktail bar and a boat with a canopy.
Gumbo, po-boys and the bar that claims the cocktail.
This is a city that eats and drinks on a schedule. Book the food walk before the heat, the class that finishes as lunch, and the bar crawl that finally settles Creole against Cajun.
By neighbourhood — and how far out of town
Quarter, uptown, bayou, River Road: the run almost everybody does first.
The newest New Orleans tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
New Orleans Premium Six-Passenger Airboat Adventure
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New Orleans Arrival Chauffeur Driven Transport by Executive SUV
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Private New Orleans Double Plantation Tour: Oak Alley and Laura
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