New Orleans 5 Day Itinerary (No Traps)
New Orleans 5 Day Itinerary (No Traps)
Five days keeps every day of our New Orleans 4 Day Itinerary intact and adds a slower fifth day at City Park and Bayou St. John, the quiet, un-touristed half of the city most three and four day visitors never see. The New Orleans 6 Day Itinerary builds one more day on top of this same plan.
Book these before you go:
- The National WWII Museum ticket , $36 adult, half a day minimum.
- A guided St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 tour , $33, mandatory since 2015.
- Preservation Hall is door-only, no reserved seats to book; check the lineup on preservationhall.com and arrive 30-45 minutes early.
- A Steamboat Natchez jazz cruise , about $43.50 daytime.
- A Garden District walking tour for the mansions and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1’s closed gates.
Day 1: French Quarter First Impressions
Morning: Café du Monde before 9am, cash only, closed nightly rather than 24 hours. Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral (free, 9:30am-4pm), Royal St’s galleries.
Afternoon: A po’boy “dressed” (lettuce, tomato, mayo), then a slow lower-Quarter wander.
Evening: Dinner in the Quarter, then Frenchmen Street after 9pm, the Spotted Cat, d.b.a., or the Maison. Bourbon St is the nightcap.
Day 2: The Museum and the Garden District
Morning: The National WWII Museum, a full campus, half a day minimum, $36 adult down to $26 student or military; current hours on nationalww2museum.org .
Afternoon: The St. Charles streetcar (running since 1835) into the Garden District, or the guided walking tour for the story behind the mansions and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1’s closed gates.
Evening: Preservation Hall, arrive 30-45 minutes early, no bar or air conditioning inside.
Day 3: The Cemetery Rule and the River
Morning: Your guided St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 tour, 45 minutes, no walk-ins since March 2015, a rule explained on nolacatholiccemeteries.org .
Midday: The French Market, then the Steamboat Natchez daytime jazz cruise, roughly two hours, from the Toulouse St. Wharf.
Evening: Marigny and Bywater, dinner at a neighborhood spot, a second Frenchmen St set if there’s energy left.
Day 4: Treme and the Deeper City
Morning: The Backstreet Cultural Museum, Louis Armstrong Park, and Congo Square, the actual geographic origin of jazz.
Afternoon: Magazine St for shopping and antiques, longer and more residential than Royal St’s version.
Evening: Dooky Chase’s Restaurant or another proper Creole kitchen.
Day 5: City Park and the Slow Half
Morning: City Park, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), and the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden. This is the largest and quietest green space in the city, and almost nobody on a three-day trip makes it here.
Afternoon: Bayou St. John, a walk or a kayak paddle, genuinely calmer than anything in the Quarter or Marigny.
Evening: A splurge dinner, Cochon or Herbsaint both work, and a Sazerac at a proper bar to close out the trip.
Is City Park worth a full day?
Not a full day, but a solid half, and it’s the one thing on this itinerary that isn’t in the guidebooks’ first ten entries. NOMA holds a genuinely strong collection for a city this size, and the sculpture garden alone justifies the detour from the Quarter for anyone who’s already covered the museum, the cemetery, and Treme.
Do the days need to run in this order?
No, the spine is flexible; the only fixed point is the cemetery tour time slot you booked, and Preservation Hall works better as a set choice than a specific day. Everything else, Treme, City Park, the Garden District, can shuffle around weather, restaurant reservations, or how tired you are on a given afternoon.
| Day | Focus | Book ahead |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | French Quarter, Frenchmen St | Nothing mandatory |
| Day 2 | WWII Museum, Garden District, Preservation Hall | Museum ticket |
| Day 3 | Cemetery tour, Steamboat Natchez, Marigny/Bywater | Cemetery tour, cruise |
| Day 4 | Treme, Congo Square, Magazine St | Nothing mandatory |
| Day 5 | City Park, NOMA, Bayou St. John | Nothing mandatory |
Lock the cemetery tour, the museum slot, and the jazz cruise before you land; City Park and Bayou St. John both reward showing up with no plan at all. Full seasonal listings for whatever week you’re visiting live on neworleans.com .