Bookmark this page: It's where you're going to want to return as you plan your adventures in the city.
That’s why Thrillist has chosen it to kick off a new series of city guides that are unlike anything else you can fit onto your phone. Here we’ve compiled original stories, written by locals, on the best restaurants right this moment, the most authentic music venues, the finest places for cocktails and dance parties and life-affirming sandwiches. And you’ll find all the most important places linked up on a map, so you can plot the steps of your perfect New Orleans weekend, just by looking at your phone. Or, knowing this town, you can use it to get yourself perfectly lost, never to return to wherever you’re from.
New Orleans' food continually gets better and more creative, even when we’re talking about such staples as lobster rolls and pizza. These are the New Orleans restaurants where the city's best keep improving, and that we keep coming back to over and over. Click here for full article...
Few of new Orleans' many signature foods ever fully translate to the outside world with the same vividness or richness. If you want to truly experience these mainstays, you’ve got to get them here. Click here for full article...
Go beyond the obvious tourist haunts, and you’ll find a bevy of essential bars that capture the prismatic essence of New Orleans drinking, in all its divey, swanky, cheap, tony, casual, festive glory. Click here for full article...
Whether you’re piling your French bread with roast beef, fried seafood, or even French fries, everyone seems to have one that holds a special place in their heart/belly. Click here for full article...
Compact though it is, choose your part of the Quarter wisely. The upper Quarter (closer to Canal St) is busier and more touristy; the lower Quarter (closer to the Marigny) is quieter, and the part of the 'hood where you'll be more likely to run into locals. On the upper side, the venerable four-star Hotel Monteleone might lean pricey, but it drips with historic charm (and has a revolving carousel bar!). You'll also find charming boutique spots, like the three 18th-century French Colonial cottages that make up the elegant Soniat House. Further down, where Quarter meets Marigny, the Frenchmen Hotel is a cool, cozy option -- with a courtyard pool -- at the foot of the bustling Frenchmen Street music strip.
Chains mainly cluster around the tourist mecca of the upper Quarter and the nearby Central Business District/Warehouse District, where you’re within easy walks of museums, dining, and galleries. There you'll also find hip base camps like the CBD branch of the Ace Hotel, which boasts a rooftop pool scene, a live music venue, and a series of ongoing, provocative salon talks and lectures that delve into the city’s culture and history. Another new addition to the area is the Catahoula, a 19th-century Creole townhouse turned boutique hotel named for the state’s official dog.
There are plenty of restaurants and bars in this historic uptown neighborhood, another popular if more sprawling area to stay. One offbeat option is the pet-friendly Green House Inn B&B, which boasts a luxurious (and clothing-optional) courtyard saltwater pool and hot tub with waterfalls. Or crash right on the St. Charles streetcar line at the elegant (yet reasonable) Columns Hotel in Anne Rice's old neighborhood and enjoy afternoon Champagne on the veranda beside its namesake pillars, in the shade of verdant live oaks. You'll be only about 3 miles from the Quarter -- this whole city is generally small enough to get from point A to point Z without much stress.
A short hop downriver from the Quarter is Bywater, the city’s most rapidly evolving (and most derided, as the Brooklyn of New Orleans) locus for new restaurants, bars and avant-garde art spaces. The funky Lookout Inn has quirky themed rooms (e.g., Elvis, Bollywood) and a tiny jewel of a swimming pool. The old Victorian that houses the Maison de Macarty is on the National Register of Historic Places, and boasts six luxe rooms and a tropical courtyard with pool and cabana bar.
People come here and hit major snags -- they waste time and money on all the wrong things. Before you run rampant down Rampart, keep a few things in mind to make your trip as smooth as possible. Click here for full article...
Take the chance on the place no one’s noticing. Great adventures, outside your comfort zone, always ride tandem with risks. Click here for full article...
We mapped the most essential places from our DestiNATION: New Orleans guide. Keep this in your pocket, to quickly find your way to where you want to be... and to get lost in all the right places along the way. Click here for full article...
Visitors and residents alike find themselves offered an embarrassment of musical riches in this town: You’ll mingle with brass-band street parades and dance sweaty-haired to post-midnight funk jams and sway to hot touring acts performing in glimmering fin-de-siecle amusement palaces. Click here for full article...
Otis Briggs may be the only person who knows what’s coming next in New Orleans. Since 1972, the clairvoyant has worked at Bottom of the Cup Tea Room -- a tea shop at 327 Chartres St in the French Quarter, where Briggs flips tarot cards, reads palms, and predicts your future in a city that lives only for today. Click here for full text...
In addition to Sunday second lines and Mardi Gras parades, there are plenty of ways to soak up New Orleans' natural and cultural wonders between meals. Click here for full article...
“There’s this sort of salacious element to what we do. We’re not going to lie about that,” says Chris Lane, the show’s master of ceremonies. “But it’s also very artistic. And it’s about creativity.” Click here for full article...
By staying solely in the Quarter, you’re missing so much of the real city, as surely as if you went to New York and couldn’t find your way out of Times Square. Click here for full article...
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