new orleans - 4 days
 

We're going to New Orleans for my niece's graduation from Tulane. The dinners are already planned. What would be the most best places I should plan on seeing while there? Thanks soo much

I've not been there in years but I do know that Café du Monde for beignets is a must do!

While I was in NO with my family, we took a morning cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking www.nosoc.com. We all had a lot of fun and ate well - learned to make Gumbo, Jamalaya, Pralines and the best bread pudding ever. We also enjoyed a carriage ride around town - it stopped at John Lafite's bar so we could all get a Hurricane -- a lot of fun, too. Lastly, we did an evening dinner cruise that had a dixieland band -- fun to see New Orleans at night from the water. Have fun.

We really enjoyed the walking tour we took - we did the cemetery and voodoo tour. Were planning to do the french quarter tour, but didn't get to it. Riding the St. Charles streetcar through the garden district and then hopping on and off to wander around was really neat.

We took a half day plantation tour to Oak Alley and Laura plantations - that was a lot of fun.

Taking one of the tours into the storm damaged areas would give you a lot to talk about when you got back home. It's quite unbelievable. A lot of the old tourist sites are still not up to par yet.

The Cooking School site doesn't seem to have had any classes since last September. It would be a shame if they had received too much damage to reopen.

I hope the cooking school is doing classes again by the time you take your trip. We had a great time. We went to Cafe du Monde but what I liked better was walking further down the street to the market. If you like to cook it's the best opportunity to find some unusual ingredients. We also took a bus tour to Oak Alley Plantation. Since we didn't have a car this was okay but if we did it again I would rent a car because I would have liked to have spent more time at the Plantation. I would check to see if they are open. I think it survived the hurricane ok. We also enjoyed a carriage ride. There's some terrific shopping and street performers in the French Quarter. Even if you only window shop the old Mardis Gras jewelry is fascinating. We also enjoyed the breakfast buffet at Court of Two Sisters. It was our last day and a good way to try a variety of dishes.

plantations were untouched by the storm. Check out their websites for info.
(Laura, Evergreen, Oak Alley, San Francisco)
wonderful side trip!

In November, I was in NOLA and drove out near the plantations. The area compared to New Orleans was like night and day. You could hardly tell there had been a hurricane at all. I think the difference is that where the plantations are didn't get hit as strongly, but more importantly, they didn't have any of the flooding.