53 Best Sights in Side Trips from New Orleans, Louisiana

Head out to Abita Springs to see where this popular beer is made—the area has long been known for its artesian spring water, which is used in brewing. Half-hour guided tours ($8) are on Wednesday and Thursday at 2 and 4 pm, and on the hour Friday 1–4 pm, Saturday 11 am–4 pm, and Sunday noon–3 pm. Tours include four 4-ounce brew samplings. Note that closed-toe shoes need to be worn on all tours. The Tap Room on premises features 30 taps, including Abita mainstays and beer only available on-site.

This museum traces the African and African American experience in south Louisiana. Videos, artifacts, and text panels combine to create a vivid, disturbing, and inspiring portrait of a people. It is an ambitious and refreshing counterpoint to the sometimes sidelined references to slavery and its legacy.

Part music store and part Cajun accordion workshop, proprietor Marc Savoy's factory turns out about five specialty accordions a month for people around the world. On Saturday mornings, from 9 am until noon, accordionists and other instrumentalists head here for a Cajun jam session that has been attracting musicians from across the region for 40 years. Chairs are set up as well for those who just want to stop by and enjoy the music.

Directly behind the Acadian Cultural Center, this living-history village—serene and set beautifully along a bayou—re-creates the early life of the region's Creoles, Cajuns, and Native Americans, focusing on the late 1700s to 1890. On select days, visitors can see a blacksmith demonstration or watch weavers at work. There are exhibits in 19 Acadian-style structures, including a music hall where live Cajun or zydeco music is played on weekend afternoons, often luring dancers onto the floor. A large, rustic restaurant serves Cajun classics. Check ahead for live demonstrations from the on-site cooking school.

Artist John Preble's strange vision—sort of a Louisiana version of the Watts Towers of Los Angeles—is an obsessive collection of found objects (combs, old musical instruments, paint-by-number art, and taxidermy experiments gone horribly awry) set in a series of ramshackle buildings, including one covered in mosaic tiles. This museum is odd and entertaining, but not for clutter-phobes. If he's there, ask Preble if you can see his studio, where he creates paintings of green-eyed Creole beauties.

A magnificent avenue of pines and moss-laden oaks leads to the entrance of the first international branch of Sacred Heart schools (founded in 1821) and the site of the only Vatican-certified miracle to occur in the United States. The miracle occurred when nuns at the convent said novenas to St. John Berchmans, a 15th-century Jesuit priest, on behalf of Mary Wilson, a very ill novice. St. John Berchmans subsequently appeared to Mary twice, and she was suddenly and unexpectedly cured. St. John Berchmans was canonized in 1888. Make an appointment to enter a shrine on the exact site of the miracle, as well as to tour the museum with artifacts dating from the school's occupation by Union troops during the Civil War.

A unit of the National Park Service, the center traces the history of the area through numerous audiovisual exhibits on food, music, and folklore. Be sure to watch the introductory film, which is a dramatization of the Expulsion of the Acadians (1755–1764), when the British deported the descendants of French settlers in the maritime provinces of Canada to the 13 colonies. Clips from the 1929 silent movie Evangeline (a fictional account based on the Longfellow poem about an Acadian girl's search for her lost love) are incorporated into the presentation—film buffs will love it. Ranger-guided boat tours of Bayou Vermilion take place March through June and September through November in a traditional Cajun boat, but require two weeks' advance registration to book. Ranger talks on local history and culture take place every Tuesday at 10 am.

A video introduction, a wall of names of Acadian Louisiana refugees, an audio tour, and a huge mural relate the odyssey of the Acadians. Behind the small heritage center containing these memorials, an eternal flame and the coats of arms of Acadian families pay tribute to their cultural and physical stamina.

The Acadian Museum is filled to the rafters with memorabilia donated by local folks—antique radios, butter churns, patchwork quilts, and yellowed newspaper clippings are all part of the mix.

Most of the structures at this re-creation of an early-19th-century bayou settlement were moved here to construct a representative "village." They actually represent a broad range of Acadian architectural styles, and the rustic general store, smithy, and chapel are replicas. The park is on 10 wooded acres, with a meandering bayou crisscrossed by wooden footbridges. Each house is decorated with antique furnishings. The weeks before Christmas bring "Noel Acadien au Village," with evening-only hours, musicians, food, and buildings covered in festive lights.

This multicultural arts center hosts art exhibits, musical performances, lectures, workshops, and children's programs. Film screenings are occasionally held at the in-house movie theater.

Naturalists are on hand in the interpretive center at this three-story cypress structure, which overlooks 150 acres of easy, peaceful nature trails and natural forest. The northern section includes a managed butterfly habitat. The focus here is on environmental education. Free weekend nature talks begin at 1 pm on the first Saturday of each month, and free guided tours are offered on the first Saturday and Sunday of every month by request. A guided evening hike on the last Saturday of the month is available by reservation ($2.17 per person).

Built in 1800 as the maison dimanche, or "Sunday house" (a town house used when attending church services) of town founder Jean Mouton, this galleried town house with a mid-19th-century addition now preserves local history. It was later home to Alexandre Mouton (1804–1885), the first Democratic governor of Louisiana. The older section is an excellent example of early Acadian architecture and contains artifacts used by settlers. The main museum features Civil War–era furnishings and memorabilia and an exhibit on Mardi Gras.

The 18,000 acres that make up the notorious Angola prison are a half-hour drive from St. Francisville, at the dead end of Highway 66. With a prison population of about 6,000 inmates, this is one of the largest prisons in the United States. Nicknamed "The Farm," Angola was once a working plantation, with prisoners for field hands. Now it produces 4 million pounds of vegetables each year, which feed 11,000 inmates across the state. The prison has been immortalized in countless songs and several films and documentaries, including Dead Man Walking and The Wildest Show in the South: The Angola Prison Rodeo. The latter film is based on the prison's biannual rodeo in April and October, which offers visitors a rare look inside the grounds of the prison. Inmates set up stands where they sell their arts and crafts during the rodeo. A small, year-round museum outside the prison's front gate houses a fascinating, eerie, and often moving collection of photographs documenting the people and events that have been a part of Angola. Items such as makeshift prisoner weapons and the electric chair used for executions until 1991 are also on display.

John James Audubon did a major portion of his Birds of America studies in this 100-acre park, and the three-story Oakley Plantation House is where Audubon tutored the young Eliza Pirrie, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Pirrie, who owned the house. The simple—even spartan—interior contrasts sharply with the extravagances of many of the River Road plantations and demonstrates the Puritan influence in this region. The grounds, too, recall the English penchant for a blending of order and wilderness in their gardens. You must follow a short, peaceful walking path to reach the house from the parking lot. A state-run museum at the start of the path provides an informative look at plantation life as it was lived in this region 200 years ago. A permanent exhibit tells the story of the slaves who lived on this site—including many of their names—and the grounds include a pair of authentic slave cabins brought here from another plantation.

The story of New Iberia's Spanish colonial roots and the role of Bayou Teche in helping nurture Cajun culture are on display in this small, well-organized museum, housed in a historic building that was once a grocery. Interactive exhibits cover the area's history, its colorful characters, and its culture. The museum's interior layout is based on the snakelike curves of Bayou Teche itself.

The bird sanctuary on the southeast edge of Jungle Gardens is sometimes so thick with egrets that it appears to be blanketed with snow. The largest egret colony in the world (20,000) begins nesting here in February or March, and offspring remain until the following winter. Herons and other birds find refuge here as well.

This Dutch Romanesque structure with Byzantine touches was completed in 1916 (construction began in 1912). In the cemetery behind the church are aboveground tombs that date back to 1820; interred here are town founder Jean Mouton, Civil War General Alfred Mouton, General Alfred Gardiner, and Cidalese Arceneaux. Next to the cathedral is a nearly 500-year-old St. John Oak, one of the charter members of the silent but leafy Louisiana Live Oak Society. Docent-guided tours are available on most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10 am, though calling ahead is recommended. Booklets are also available for self-guided tours.

You can pick up a city map and information at the Chamber of Commerce, at the foot of the bridge that gives Breaux Bridge its name, about ½ mile south of Interstate 10.

Good on a rainy day or to burn off extra energy in the kids, this museum is basically a large indoor playground, with educational games and interactive exhibits such as a grocery store, a kid-size TV news studio, a bubble exhibit, and a health exhibit.

The country's oldest rice mill that's still in operation, dating from 1912, produces distinctive wild pecan rice. Tours are conducted on the hour between 10 am and 3 pm. The adjacent Konriko Company Store sells Cajun crafts and foods.

The area surrounding Eunice is the major stomping ground for an annual event, Courir de Mardi Gras, French for "Fat Tuesday Run," which takes place on Mardi Gras Day. Costumed horseback riders dash through the countryside, stopping at farmhouses along the way to shout, "Voulez-vous recevoir cette bande de Mardi Gras?" ("Do you wish to receive the Mardi Gras krewe?") The answer is always yes, and the group enlarges and continues, gathering food for the street festivals that wind things up.

The closest intact plantation to New Orleans is also the oldest intact plantation in the entire lower Mississippi Valley. It's a simple West Indies–style house, built in 1787–90 by an enslaved builder of mixed race for the Destrehan family; it's typical of the homes built by the earliest planters in the region. It is notable for the hand-hewn cypress timbers used in its construction and for the insulation in its walls, made of bousillage, a mixture of horsehair, Spanish moss, oyster shells, and mud. A costumed guide leads a 45-minute tour through the house furnished with period antiques, starting every half-hour. "The Unheard Voices of the German Coast Tour" is a special two-hour tour offered on Fridays and Saturdays at 10:15 am and 1:15 pm, focusing on the marginalized people of the region—especially enslaved Africans. The grounds also hold exhibits showcasing documents signed by former Presidents, a history of the extraordinary 1811 Slave Revolt, and original slave cabins from a nearby plantation. Demonstrations of crafts such as weaving, barrel-making, or open-hearth cooking occur regularly, and an annual fall festival with music, crafts, and food is held the second weekend in November.

This museum, in a former railroad depot, contains modest exhibits on Cajun culture, including music and Mardi Gras celebrations.

This 170-acre garden has trails through stands of wisteria, palms, lilies, irises, and ferns, and offers a lovely perspective on south Louisiana wilderness. Birdlife includes white egrets and Louisiana herons, and there's also a 900-year-old statue of Buddha. These gardens belonged to Edward Avery McIlhenny, the son of the Tabasco company's founder, who brought back plants from his travels: lotus and papyrus from Egypt, bamboo from China. You can park your car at the beginning of the trails and strike out on foot, or drive through the gardens and stop at will.

The courthouse contains an impressive collection of more than 2,000 historical photographs of life in the Lafayette area. There are images of famous politicians such as Dudley LeBlanc and Huey Long working the stump, and scenes from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

This sparkling natural-history museum includes changing exhibitions and lots of fun hands-on science for kids. The most popular permanent attraction is the planetarium, outfitted with high-definition digital equipment.

Telling the story of four generations of free and enslaved Creole women, this is a more intimate and better-documented presentation of Creole plantation life than most properties on River Road. The narrative of the guides is built on first-person accounts, estate records, and original artifacts from the Locoul family, who built the simple, Creole-style house in 1805. Laura Locoul, whose great-grandparents founded the estate, wrote a detailed memoir of plantation life, family fights, and the management of slaves. The information from Laura's memoir and the original slave cabins and other outbuildings (workers on the plantation grounds lived in the cabins into the 1980s) provide rare insights into slavery in south Louisiana. The plantation gift shop stocks a large selection of literature by and about slaves and slavery in south Louisiana and the United States. Senegalese slaves at Laura are believed to have first told folklorist Alcée Fortier the tales of Br'er Rabbit; his friend, Joel Chandler Harris, used the stories in his Uncle Remus tales. Tours take place approximately every 40 minutes.

Shaded by giant live oaks draped with Spanish moss, this 157-acre park has picnic tables and pavilions and early Acadian structures. The on-site museum traces the history of the Acadians and their settlement along the Bayou Teche in the early 1800s. The modest house was built in 1815 of handmade bricks, and it contains Louisiana antiques. An hour-long tour includes many interesting details about life on the plantation.

Housed in a 1925 Illinois Central railroad station near the Old State Capitol, this idiosyncratic but high-quality collection brings together a contemporary art gallery, an Egyptian tomb exhibit featuring a mummy from 300 BC, a children's museum, and a kid-friendly planetarium. The planetarium presents shows regularly, as does the ExxonMobil Space Theater. The museum hosts traveling exhibits, and houses the nation's second-largest collection of sculptures by 20th-century Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović, many of which adorn the entrance hall.