New Orleans Travel Guide: 23 Best & Most Popular Things To Do, See, & Eat In Nolo

[Music] [Music] hi everyone thank you so much for joining me in this video so for my 31st birthday Jordan actually surprised me with a trip to New Orleans neither one of us had been before and it's been on our bucket list of places to go especially here in the United States so I was super excited when I found out it was such a fun trip it was unlike any place I'd ever been before the culture was so diverse it was so lively there like it just honestly felt like there was always something going on and I love that because it's like very different from like everyday regular life so I found out we were going to New Orleans the day before we were supposed to leave and as soon as I found out I hopped on my computer did a bunch of research into like places to go places to eat because I really wanted to check out the best places that New Orleans has to offer in the short amount of time that we were going to be there so after hours and hours of research I compiled a list and I use that list for our trip to try to plan out all of the things that we're supposed to do I'm hoping that by sharing this list with you guys and sharing our experience in our itinerary with you guys it may help you with your trip if you are planning a trip to New Orleans yourself ok so first let's talk about where to stay we stayed at the Royal Sonesta which is on Bourbon Street it was a great location I loved it because it was so centrally located we were within a 20 to 25-minute walking distance of pretty much anywhere in the French quarters and I love that I love not having to call a car and I love just being able to walk around and not have to worry about driving or like parking or anything like that so because the French quarters it's pretty much what New Orleans is like known for I think that's a great location to stay there's honestly like a bar a restaurant like shops like everywhere in the French quarters no matter what street you're on honestly Bourbon is great because you can literally for us at least we could go downstairs walk out of our hotel and you're like literally in the middle of like the party scene one thing to know is it is legal to carry drinks around on the streets in New Orleans which is what makes it so much fun we're not limited to just a few bars for one night you literally can see so much because you're able to carry with you and I feel like that kind of saves a little bit of money also because we're not getting as many drinks as many bars there are a few cons though with staying on Bourbon Street and the most important one is the noise it gets very very loud on Bourbon as you can imagine with all of the people and the crowds on Bourbon Street so if you're a light sleeper that might be a problem we were lucky enough to get a room on a side street so we were like half a block away from Bourbon Street and that actually helped the noise a little bit so although we could hear a little bit of like the craziness going on we were far enough from the main streets that it wasn't like terrible so if you do want to say I'm bourbon maybe consider like staying on a side street or like getting your room that's not on Bourbon itself unless you want to like be a part of all that so I think that the best way to share my recommendations of things to do in New Orleans is to pretty much share with you guys our itinerary and everything that we did in New Orleans I think we did a pretty good job of getting through most of my list now there were a few items that we weren't able to get to so I'm going to include the full list of everything I came up with before the trip in the description below if you're curious I'm also going to go into more details about restaurants and things to get at those restaurants in the description so be sure to check that out if you're interested alright so let's go ahead and just get into our trip and then I'll talk about the things we experienced and our thoughts on them as I talk so we got into New Orleans Friday night and ended up leaving Monday morning and that's because we just drove to New Orleans we live in Austin Texas so it's supposed to be like an eight and a half hour drive for us it ended up taking more than 10 hours like 10 to 11 hours for us to get there so we got in a lot later than we had anticipated we were pretty hungry at this point so we ended up stopping my Acme Oyster House because that was one of the top items I wanted to check off my list was to check out sharp wood Easter's so when I did my research there were two places that were recommended to get charbroiled oysters and Acme Oyster House was one of the first ones to come up now with Acme Oyster House they don't take reservations so a lot of times there will be aligned to get to the restaurants to sit down and eat luckily when we went because it was so late there wasn't really that long of a line but if you go like during dinner time or maybe like during lunch time just anticipate a little bit of a wait so they to our trip which is the first full day of our trip I would say try to wake up early and get to Cafe de Mon okay let's just pause it right here I know it's Cafe Du Monde I don't know why I kept pronouncing it wrong but please just bear with me before 8:30 if Cafe de Mon is something that it's on your list I would highly suggest going before 8:30 because after 9:00 that's like when the crowd gets there for breakfast and the line gets ridiculously long so from our hotel which is the Royal Sonesta it was about like a 10-15 minute walk to get to Cafe Du moon and honestly that was not bad at all it was actually really nice outside if we're going like in the middle of summer and it's like super hot you probably don't want to walk around that much when we went it was a really good time to walk around and it was really nice to kind of just taken everything taking the atmosphere at the vibes as we're walking they also have rail cars that you can take also bit from where we were you'd have to like walk to the rail car get on the rail car and then like take it just a couple of minutes and within that couple minutes you could walk like 10 minutes to get to that location so we decided to walk instead so when I did my research I would say Cafe des moon was probably the most recommended most popular spot in New Orleans so if you go definitely check it out because everyone raves about it the cafe au lait there is delicious I can see why people rave about it the coffee just has such a delicious like fragrance and aroma it was so good and the beignets are amazing now there is another cafe that offers coffee and beignets as well and that is cafe beignet which is actually right across the street from our hotel unfortunately we weren't able to go there and get beignets but I did get a cafe au lait to go one of the days and to be honest I like Cafe Du moon a little bit better like the coffee there was just so much more fragrant it was like delicious one thing to note is cafe beignet is open pretty late and it is on bourbon so you can go there and they have like live Josh shows at night and they have a bar also so you can get like four drinks we actually ended up hitting at Cafe beignet for drinks being night we got there because it was like so close to our hotel and it was like one of the only places where it was a little bit on the chiller side and it was so fun I honestly really enjoyed the atmosphere of Cafe beignet at night with like the live jazz and everything okay so sorry I got a sidetrack but let's go back to our itinerary for day number two when you walk down to Cafe des moon if you go a little bit further you're gonna hit the French market this is another place that's really fun to go see it's almost kind of like their farmers market vibe no the French market is actually really fun and I definitely recommend going there because there are a lot of food and other vendors so it's just a fun place to kind of go and check out if you're hungry get food there it looked delicious I wish we would have had time to eat there and then there's also a bunch of vendors selling like crafts and other items as well if you want to get like souvenirs from the trip so the reason we didn't get any food at the French markets because we were saving her stomach for a muffaletta from central groceries now central groceries is the home of the original muffuletta they created the muffuletta and they're so famous that you can actually order it online and have it shipped to you overnight because people like crave it that badly and they're like paying like $100 for like two muffuletta so we wanted to go and check it out because so many people rave about it and a muffaletta it's pretty much just like a cold-cut sandwich on muffle out of breath there's a bunch of cold cut deli meats on there with like this olive salad that they make in-house oh my goodness it's just so delicious it's nice because it's a cool cut so you can like bring it back to your hotel with New Orleans you're drinking a lot so having a cold-cut sandwich ready to go is really nice definitely if you're in New Orleans get a muffaletta from Central Grocery this is like a top on my list so pretty much what we did was we went down on one side of the street down to French market we circled around on the other side of the street stop by Center for a space now if you leave Center bursaries and you go to the right you're going to be heading back to the main area again and along the way is Jackson Square now Jackson Square is a destination to visit also especially since you're already in that area they have a lot of street performers and like artists and everything out there so it's actually a really fun place to stop and just people watch there are a ton of performers and it was just like a lot of fun to watch because you know they are entertainers however I would say because of that like make sure you have a few dollars on you like some cash on you so that you can tip the performers if you do stop to either take pictures take videos or to watch them Jackson Square itself was really beautiful it's like this little park as soon as you walk into like the park the church is literally the central like backdrop of it and then as we were walking to the back it was like another Street performance in the back that was the one where people jumped over other people I don't know but it was a lot of fun so definitely stop there if you have time to kill if it's beautiful day out like that is a really fun area very lively also during the day without having to drink any alcohol so after that we walked towards the back of Jackson squared and kind of walked up this like Street and along the way we came across Pat O'Brien's now Pat O'Brien's is fun because they are actually the home of the hurricane which is like the super like strong sugary drink but it's delicious especially at Pat O'Brien's because I feel like it's not as sweet and it's more like authentic than at other places in New Orleans I really like Pat O'Brien's because they have this beautiful courtyard in the back that you can go especially during the day and just kind of grab a drink sit down and just enjoy yourself so after that we went back to our hotel room to take a little bit of break because we had been up walking around for the past few hours we stopped at the pool at our hotel just to kind of lounge around and just unwind a little bit and it was really pretty so we actually ended up doing a ghost tour that night at like 6 p.m. which ended up working out perfectly now there are a lot of ghost tours in New Orleans because noir is known for like their ghosts it's such an old city honestly both Jordan and I weren't really too big into like spirits and ghosts and stuff however we wanted to go onto the ghost tour because we heard it was a great way to get to know the history of New Orleans so because our tour got done around 8 o'clock we went to mr. B's for dinner around like 8:30 mr. B's is a very popular spot try to make reservations if possible luckily because we were eating a little bit later there wasn't really a wait so we just walked in there is a dress code so if you plan on going there to eat just make sure that you are dressed appropriately the food at mr. B's though is so so delicious I think their most famous dish is their barbecue shrimp and that was what I got and it was phenomenal they also have good gumbo like their gumbo Yaya supposed to be really good the crab cakes are supposed to be really good overall everything that we got at mr. beaks was delicious it is a little bit on the pricier side it's a little bit more of a high-end restaurant but it was totally worth it and I highly recommended mr. Bies to go eat because it was just so delicious I want to go back just for the barbecue shrimp so after mr. B's of course we just walked around Bourbon Street again just kind of walked around the French corners we stopped by Hotel Monteleone to check out their carousel bar which is supposed to be like really popular also but when we got there because it was so late it was like packed if you want to go check out the carousel bar I would say maybe go earlier in the evening so that it's not super packed but it looked really fun the Monte Leon is like beautiful however it's supposed to be really haunted so if you do stay there too just keep that in mind another bar to consider going to close to bourbon or on Bourbon Street is called like old absinthe house or something like that they specialize in absinthe which is like very unique because there aren't very many absent bars that I've been to and just the way that they pour these drinks the way that they make em is so unique and so fun if you're not a huge fan of licorice might not be the thing for you but I think it's a really fun experience alright so on Sunday which was the second full day that we were there for we ended up waking up a little later because we had been drinking we you know had a late night in the night before we would have woken up a little bit earlier I would have definitely checked out liepman yeas I can't babe in yeh but because we went a little bit late we didn't get to check that out so I ended up just picking up a coffee instead at Cafe beignet however for lunch we walked to dragos which is around like 15-20 minutes away from our hotel it's not in the French quarters itself it's a little bit off of it but still within walking distance and dragos is another place that was highly recommended for the charbroiled oysters i would say the difference between the char boyd oysters at Drago's and the try boyd oysters at Acme Oyster House is that Drago's have more of like a roux in it whereas Acme Oyster House has just like cheese on top of the oysters so after a lunch we ended up doing a swamp tour with Cajun encounters this is another thing that I would highly highly highly recommend doing especially during the day when you're trying to kill time we're trying to figure out like things to do to get to see New Orleans it was so much fun I would recommend going with the large group tour it's cheaper and it's a little bit more fun because you have more like interacting with the people on your tour personally I think the tour guides are really really good at their jobs are super knowledgeable and they're entertaining they do a really good job of trying to find new wildlife to see and also to give you a tour of like the bayou itself so you can see what life is like on the bayou there are actually people who live right on the water from what I learned from the tour guide he said that the best time to go if you really want to see wildlife is during like spring and summer but spring is like the best time because that's when everything comes back to life but because it was a little bit cooler when we went we didn't really see as much we did get to see like a mural Pig though so it was just kind of like a hog and that was really neat it was really cute we saw one alligator and it's like rusting dormant stage where it was like barely above the water just trying to soak up the Sun so after the small tour we went back to our hotel and got ready for dinner we went to Commander's Palace which is supposed to be like award-winning it is like the most famous restaurants in New Orleans and where we were told time and time again to go it is a little bit nicer of a restaurant there is a dress code for it and I would say it even has like a nicer feel than mr. B's it's in the garden district so we have to take an uber to get there but everything that we got was so so good and you really can't get anything like that anywhere else as a highlight was there dessert which is like this bread pudding souffle and they poured this alcohol cream sauce on top oh my goodness it was probably one of the best desserts I've ever had so after dinner at this point we were exhausted because we've been in New Orleans for like two and a half days we ended up calling it a night however if we would have had a little bit more energy this would have been a good time to check out Frenchmen Street it's supposed to be where the locals go so it's not as crazy as Bourbon Street it has more of like a like jazz laid-back vibe but it's also supposed to be like a really fun Street to visit also if you do get a chance to go check out Frenchmen Street I was told to end your night with a gator dog from that dog which is like this hot dog place that also has really good french fries and they're open late but apparently it's supposed to be like delicious so if you do go to front-run Street and your night with that I wish we would have had a chance to try it but we will for sure next time so that was pretty much the end of a trip we didn't get a chance to try everything on my list that I put together but we hit most of it and I was pretty happy with what we were able to get in the short amount of time that we were there some of the things that I wish we would have gotten to or I want to try next time is to go to a jazz show at the Preservation Hall it's supposed to be really really fun and a really great show to watch from my understanding you can't really get tickets for it it's like first-come first-serve so you actually have to go and get in line another thing that you could do during the day is to tour the homes in the Garden District apparently these homes are like super super 90s a lot of sort of Liberty's live in the garden just kind of give you an idea just how nice sartorial you a plantation or this was something that was on earth also but there are other things that nurse Gary so even though we I wanted to try it even if there were a few restaurants yet some of those are amazing here at award-winning restaurant known for their fried chicken and southern food and like in the world I really want to go and try that next time some other restaurants that our tour guide actually recommended is Jax Emo's Pascal Minnelli and coterie all three of those restaurants are really highly recommended by our swamp tour guide and I feel like you know he's a local he's eating there like all his life like it's got to be pretty good for a local to recommend them so those restaurants are definitely on our list for next time we go another one is Antoine's which is supposed to be the oldest restaurant in New Orleans it sounds like people go to int wants mostly for like the decor the atmosphere I don't know how their food is it's kind of gotten mixed reviews online so yeah that is pretty much it for the restaurant and pretty much everything to do I'll have the full list again down in the description below so you guys can check that out if you're interested so after our wonderful wonderful trip to New Orleans I do have a few tips if you plan on going to New Orleans yourself the first one is to bring some cash with you there are some bars that do not take card also there are a lot of street performers or a lot of like services that can get such as like tours and stuff where you want to like tip people and so cash is really nice to have on hand for that however when I was talking to Jordan about this list he also told me that a lot of the street performers take venmo so maybe cash is not that necessary so tip number two I have is the bigger the drinks the marsh sugar it's going to have so when you're on Bourbon Street you're gonna see a ton of huge drinks like the hand grenades the frozen drinks and like the hurricanes they just have a ton of sugar in them so that's something to think about because more sugar means more of a hangover the next day also I think a lot of those drinks have Everclear in them they just try to get you the strongest drink possible like for the cheapest price so that's something to kind of keep in mind also so these drinks are not only sugary but they can be really really strong as well so just be careful when you're out there drinking which leads me to my number one tip if you go to New Orleans is to get a case of water before you go to your hotel or like stop at a convenience store on the way to your hotel and get a case of water because they do not provide you with bottled water in your hotel or at least arson and they're charging $7 for the bottled water in the room for half of that price you can get like a whole case of water that will last you the entire trip and that's what we did and we found that so helpful that water helped us so much on our trip okay so that is pretty much it for our trip to New Orleans and my recommendations of where to go and what eat if you go to New Orleans again all of these spots are pretty touristy these are kind of like the top recommended spots that people suggest when they go to New Orleans so I hope you enjoy this video I hope you found this helpful and please let me know if you have any questions or any suggestions in the comment section below give this video a like if you enjoyed it and if you haven't already be sure to click on the subscribe button right there and hit that Bell notification so you can see more videos like this I had to see in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: Quynh Pham

Views: 11,597

Keywords: new orleans, nolo, new orleans travel guide, best things to do in new orleans, what to do in new orleans, what to eat in new orleans, nolo travel guide, where to go in new orleans, best of new orleans, swamp tour, royal sonesta new orleans, commanders palace, mr b's new orleans, muffaleta, cafe du monde, bourbon street, central grocery, new orleans ultimate travel guide, best food new orleans, best restaurants new orleans, cajun encounters, new orleans louisiana

Id: -EDeiuCtzY8

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019