Riverside

Itineraries

If you are virgin to New Orleans-these are my personal suggestions for first exposure. I welcome yours (just comment below). Again, I’m uptown-centric, I’m happy to learn. I will leave it to you to review street maps and online restaurant menus to get an idea for prices and general layout. My $$$-rating may be your $$-rating (likely). You can make anything $$$$ in NOLA if you try hard enough.

It’s a walking city. Be in shape. And it’s an eating city. Be hungry. Parking is awesome.

What to do if you only have one day: Get out of the quarter and get uptown.

Don’t spend any more time in the French Quarter than you have to. You need an experienced local guide to avoid tourist-trap time wasters.
You need to see the historical architecture, so spending a few hours walking the streets between and including Bourbon, Canal, St. Ann and the river will accomplish this. You can easily lose a whole day here and not see much of real value. Dawn is the best time to be in the Quarter while they’re hosing down the sidewalks and the college kids are asleep. Just fat old people from Ohio walking around. If you can see the river when the fog is sitting on it at dawn, it’ll change your life. Get a coffee at Royal Blend (only because Kaldi’s was driven out by insane Vieux Carré rent) and walk around until you’re ready for lunch.

Some things of interest:

201 Bourbon St- where I was a barkeep when it was a cigar bar with a gorgeous antique Storyville backbar. Now it’s a daiquiri/pizza joint with lots of neon. It looks to me like the backbar is still there and they built a wall in front of it.

Jean Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bourbon & St. Phillip (little out of bounds).
Napoleon House has a cool history you want to read up on before you see it (this is where you go for a Pimm’s Cup when it’s raining).
Go into the mall called Canal Place. Take the elevators to the parking garage and go to the top floor and look at the quarter and river from there. The garage at Canal Place is an awesome place to park your car for cheap while you tool around the quarter. I think you get validation with a Canal Place purchase, too. They pat you on the back and tell you you’re a nice person or something. Enter the garage from Wells St. which runs between Canal and Iberville. I need to double check this.

It’s a crime that the people of New Orleans don’t have better access to the river. You can’t even see it uptown. But a good place to check out the river is the Spanish Plaza in front of Riverwalk Mall.

For a super-cheap, super good lunch, just eat at the food court in Riverwalk. Get Mike Anderson’s or whatever looks good. This is the first place I ever ate raw oysters- and lots of them. There is usually a giant cruise ship or military ship or freighter docked right at the food court- pretty cool. Before the levee failure, the big recent tragedy of New Orleans was the cargo ship MV Brightfield crashing into this mall in 1996.

Acme Oysters on Iberville near Bourbon is good for this too, if you don’t mind eating raw oysters out of a wax cup like I did 4 times a week for 6 months.

If you want to spend a few bucks on a a bistro lunch in the Quarter, go to Palace Café on Canal and get a few appetizers like the Shrimp Rémoulade, Crabmeat Cheesecake, Shrimp Tchefuncte, The Turtle Soup with a heavy splash of sherry. NO- not like those, get ALL of those. And a glass of bubbly. Reservations wouldn’t hurt. Don’t fill up on the bread. You’ll be very sorry. Then after lunch:

My #1, must-do activity in NOLA (if you’re only in the city 3 hours):

Where Royal Street crosses Canal St., it becomes St. Charles. Get on the street car here and ride it as far as it goes Uptown. Pay attention to everything on that side of St. Charles very carefully. Then ride the street car back to the quarter (it’s a loop) and pay attention to everything on that side of St. Charles very carefully. One stop you must make is at Audubon Park. Walk along the water all the way to the parking lot at Magazine street. Turn around and walk back on the paved jogging path. Pay attention to the houses that sit right on the park (on your right). These are two of the greatest activities you can do in your life and the cost is less than $5 in street car fare.

Now shopping! Or window shopping…

Get back to your car at Canal Place and drive up Magazine St. There are millions of shops and restaurants on Magazine. There are real clothing boutiques ranging from terribly affordable to sky’s-the-limit prices. There are Antique shops that are little more than indoor garage sales and others that have nothing under $30,000. And both treat you the same, there is no snobbery so feel free to walk around like you have a snowball’s chance in Hell of affording anything. You can find hand-made arts, crafts & photography. Every third door is a delectable snack or coffee. I suggest you hit them all.

Pay special attention to the following districts on Magazine St. (I’ll need to tweak this a bit some of these shops may be gone):

Cross streets Felicity to Josephine (around Sophie Wright Place Park)

Do not miss Jim Russell’s Rare Records

Cross streets 7th St. to Louisiana

Stop into Sucré for some macaroons.

Magazine & State St.

Lots to see here, if you buy cards or post cards, go to Scriptura.

Again, you can spend a whole day or more on Magazine St., just stopping to look at what catches your whim. Once you’re this far uptown, you can cross over St. Charles and hit the Maple Street Shopping District and Oak Street Shopping District (see map below).

For your evening, go back to Audubon Park (park at Magazine St. Entrance) and watch the birds come to roost for the evening on Ochsner Island as the sun goes down. Then find an awesome place to eat dinner.