What to do in New Orleans beyond Mardis Gras. Photo / Morgan Petroski on Unsplash
What to do in New Orleans beyond Mardis Gras. Photo / Morgan Petroski on Unsplash
New Orleans is famous for Mardi Gras, a jamboree of the most extravagant kind. If you missed this year’s celebrations, fear not, here’s a year-round itinerary that always delights, writes Ranjan Pal.
In the pantheon of great American cities, New Orleans, Louisiana (Nola) occupies its own very special niche. With its diverse strands of Native American, French, West African, and Spanish cultures and languages all coming together to produce the city’s unique Creole heritage, there is simply nothing like it anywhere else in America. People come from all over the world to enjoy the finest in Dixieland jazz, which originated here, its delicious Creole cuisine with its signature dishes like gumbo and jambalaya, and its colourful, exuberant, and noisy festivals of which the most famous is Mardi Gras, which culminates on February 13.
But there is so much more to New Orleans than Mardi Gras and here we try to help you step off the party circuit and broaden your cultural horizons.
New Orleans is famous for its Mardi Gras celebrations, the most exuberant of which culminate in Fat Tuesday. Photo / 123rf
A great place to start your Nola journey is Vue Orleans, an interactive cultural centre that opened in March 2022. Enter the main exhibit hall at the bottom of the Four Seasons hotel building and take a unique ride through the history, music, and culture of New Orleans. Here you will come face-to-face with actors playing the characters who built Nola, such as Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (who founded it in the name of the French in 1718 on the first high ground he could find upstream of the Mississippi delta) and hear them tell their fascinating stories on screen. Stick your head inside giant trumpet-shaped listening stations and choose from a selection of seven musical genres—from jazz to classical—to hear Nola greats like Irma Thomas, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong. And let’s not forget food—the Story Café at Vue Orleans has a menu of 12 interactive story clips where culinary celebrities narrate fun facts and prepare signature Nola dishes like seafood gumbo and crawfish étouffée. Finally, take the lift to the 34th floor and explore the 360-degree observation deck with flat-touch screens that allow you to zoom into points of interest and have their significance described.
Vue Orleans, a cultural centre that opened in March 2022. Photo / Saroj Sirkeck
You must not miss the walking tour of the French Quarter or Vieux Carré - which translates as old square. This is Nola’s oldest and most famous neighbourhood and is more a rectangle than a square, being 13 blocks long by six blocks wide, running right up along the Mississippi River. The French Quarter is known for its distinctive architecture, drawing heavily on French and Spanish styles and designs, and its vibrant nightlife along Bourbon and Frenchmen streets. The tour starts at Jackson Square, named by a grateful city for Lieut. Gen. Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans (and later the seventh US President), who saved the residents from the invading British forces in 1815.
The French Quarter, or Vieux Carré, is New Orleans' oldest neighbourhood. Photo / Louisiana Office of Tourism
At the head of the square is the St. Louis Cathedral, towering grandly over the green space with its three conical spires and flanked by the Cabildo and the Presbytere, imposing buildings built for administrative and religious purposes in the Spanish classical style and now housing the Louisiana State Museum.
Visit the Cabildo for an interesting tour through the history of Louisiana, including the Battle of New Orleans and the Presbytere for exhibitions on the evolution of Mardi Gras and on Nola’s worst natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina and the rebuilding of the city in its aftermath.
Your guide will lead you around the grid of narrow streets, bustling with tourists, that comprise the French Quarter where every building tells a story. Usually, the tour ends at the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, whose sadistic mistress imprisoned and tortured her black slaves.
Photo / Saroj Sirkeck
At the end of the tour refresh yourself with a coffee and doughnuts at the iconic Café Du Monde, founded in 1862 and located at one end of the French Market. This is as far removed from the bland Starbucks experience as you can imagine. Be prepared to wait in a long line and then get hustled to your table—in a giant hall open to the outdoors and cooled by ceiling fans—by shouting waiters dressed in green-and-white striped uniforms. The menu consists only of dark-roasted coffee with chicory (served black or au lait), beignets, white and chocolate milk, hot chocolate, and freshly squeezed orange juice. The beignet is a sort of French doughnut, a square piece of deep-fried dough, but, unlike a doughnut, has no hole. It is covered with powdered sugar and served in orders of three. For a single-product eatery and an undoubted tourist trap, the Café du Monde is, for all that, a delightful experience and the beignets were absolutely delicious!
Traditional beignets in New Oreleans. Photo / Chelsea Audibert on Unsplash
Before I got to New Orleans, I had never even heard of a Sazerac. So my education as a mixologist was further enhanced when I found out that it was the signature cocktail of the Big Easy, being a delicious blend of ingredients that reflect the inimitable Nola culture. The lead role is played by Kentucky rye whisky (standing in for the original Sazerac cognac from France), assisted by a supporting cast of Peychaud bitters (Haitian in origin) and Herbsaint (an anise-flavoured liqueur created as a substitute for the infamous absinthe), sugar, and lemon twist. The best place to meet all three characters in person is the Sazerac House, which is a museum, a bar, and a distillery all rolled into one. Here visitors can take a free self-guided tour starting at the top floor, learn from the hi-tech interactive exhibits, and also sample the cocktails made by chatty bartenders. The third floor is devoted to the history of the Sazerac cocktail and the evolution of cocktail culture in Nola. From here you descend past a giant wall of spirits, sparkling like gems against a white background, to the second floor. Here you can learn about rum and other American spirits and the art of crafting cocktails before ending up on the ground floor where you can watch a live distillery in action and visit the gift shop.
The Sazerac House in New Orleans offers visitors an insight into the history of the Sazerac cocktail and cocktail culture in New Orleans. Photo / Saroj Sirkeck
The most famous museum in Nola and its top-rated attraction has nothing to do with the art, culture, or history of this incredible city. This is the National WWII Museum, which opened its doors on the 56th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2000. This national institution owes its existence in Nola to the passion and perseverance of a couple of local luminaries and is well worth a visit even if you are not a World War II buff. There are six large halls that explore different aspects of the war from an American perspective and use every conceivable medium: film, immersive exhibits, large-scale reconstructions, and first-person oral histories among them.
New Orleans' National WWII Museum opened its doors on the 56th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2000. Photo / Jessica Tan on Unsplash
Start with the Louisiana Memorial Pavilion, which traces the history of American involvement in the war and ends with the inaugural museum display of the momentous landings of troops in Normandy on D-Day. Look out for the amphibious “Higgins boat” which landed US troops on the hostile Normandy beaches, the major contribution of Crescent City industry to the war effort. Personally, I learned the most from the twin displays, “Road to Berlin” and “Road to Tokyo”, which chronicle the American campaigns in both the European and Pacific theatres of war in an engrossing multimedia experience.
You can end your tour of duty in the aviation gallery, where you will be awestruck by the suspended display of six iconic warplanes, ranging from the nimble P-51 Mustang fighter to the lumbering Flying Fortress bomber. You can also examine the cockpit of a B-24 Liberator bomber exhibited on the ground, and hence easily accessible.
Checklist
NEW ORLEANS
GETTING THERE
Air NZ, American Airlines and United all fly from Auckland to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport with one stopover.
