New Orleans, Louisiana

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is 24km from the French Quarter. Walk immediately to Café Du Monde on Decatur Street for the obligatory first encounter: beignets (square fried dough pillows dusted in an obscene quantity of powdered sugar that will cover your dark clothes) and café au lait (half chicory coffee, half steamed milk). This has been the correct first experience in New Orleans since 1862 and nothing has changed. From Café Du Monde, walk Jackson Square — the great plaza in front of St. Louis Cathedral — and the Cathedral itself (the oldest continuously operating cathedral in the US, rebuilt three times since 1718). The surrounding Pontalba Buildings (the oldest apartment buildings in the US) face the square. An evening walk through the French Quarter to Frenchmen Street — the correct music street, not Bourbon Street — for jazz at d.b.a. and Spotted Cat.

Commander's Palace in the Garden District is the most important restaurant in New Orleans history — the training ground of Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme, and Jamie Shannon, where Creole cuisine has been refined and elevated since 1880. The Saturday jazz brunch (one of the world's most celebrated restaurant experiences, with a Dixieland jazz band playing tableside) requires reservations weeks in advance. The Garden District around Commander's is New Orleans' finest residential neighborhood — a grid of antebellum mansions in Greek Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne styles, the homes of the pre-Civil War cotton elite, with gardens of live oaks and magnolias. The streetcar on St. Charles Avenue (the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, running since 1835) connects the Garden District to the French Quarter. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — one of the famous above-ground tomb cemeteries — is in the Garden District and open for walking.

Bourbon Street is not New Orleans's best face, but it is its most famous and a genuinely extraordinary human spectacle that cannot be entirely skipped. The 24-hour-open bars, the Hand Grenade cocktails in green grenades, the daiquiri shops with frozen drinks in every color, and the sheer volume of people celebrating in the street is unlike anything else in America. Galatoire's on Bourbon Street — exactly the opposite of the Bourbon Street cliché — is the most traditional and most beloved old-school Creole restaurant in the city, unchanged since 1905, where the lunch tables are occupied by New Orleans's oldest families in their best clothes. For contrast: the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone (the rotating bar that has been spinning since 1949), the Napoleon House for a Pimm's Cup (the house specialty since 1914), and the Preservation Hall for traditional New Orleans jazz — the small music hall that preserved Dixieland jazz when no one else cared, still performing nightly.

The bayous and swamps surrounding New Orleans are the ecological and cultural foundation of Louisiana — a labyrinth of cypress swamps, Spanish moss, alligators, and the Cajun culture that arrived when the French Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755. Barataria Preserve (Jean Lafitte National Historical Park), 30 minutes south of New Orleans, has excellent boardwalk walks through the cypress-tupelo swamp with regular alligator sightings and extraordinary birdlife. Boat tours of the surrounding bayous are the classic Louisiana experience: flat-bottomed airboats through the channels, guide pointing out alligators sunning on the banks, and the specific atmosphere of a swamp landscape unlike any other in North America. Return via the Ninth Ward for the Hurricane Katrina memorial walk and the Bywater neighborhood, home to some of New Orleans's best small restaurants and art galleries.

New Orleans has arguably the finest sandwich culture in America — the po-boy (a French bread roll filled with fried shrimp, oysters, roast beef, or hot sausage) is the definitive local street food. Domilise's Po-Boy & Bar on Annunciation Street has been making the city's finest fried shrimp po-boys since 1918 in a kitchen the size of a kitchen. Mosca's on the West Bank is the legendary Italian-Creole roadhouse where the spaghetti bordelaise and baked oysters have attracted generations of New Orleans families since 1946. For the complete gumbo experience: Dooky Chase's Restaurant in Tremendé — where Leah Chase ("Queen of Creole Cuisine") cooked for 70 years and served Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Charles, and Louis Armstrong. The Superdome (Caesars Superdome) tour and the New Orleans Saints history in the most beloved NFL team of a city that lives and dies with football.

The National WWII Museum is the most visited attraction in Louisiana and one of the finest history museums in the United States — a 400,000-square-foot complex documenting the full American experience of World War II with extraordinary exhibitions, personal testimonies, and the immersive Solomon Victory Theater. The museum was founded by Stephen Ambrose (author of Band of Brothers) and its road pavilions covering the Pacific, Atlantic, and European theaters are each outstanding. The Warehouse Arts District surrounding the museum has the greatest concentration of contemporary art galleries in the South —kat including the Contemporary Arts Center, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and hundreds of private galleries. Cochon restaurant (James Beard Award-winning chef Donald Link's definitive Southern food) is in the Warehouse District for a final serious dinner.

Louis Armstrong Airport is a direct Uber from the French Quarter. A final morning belongs to the French Market on Decatur Street (a covered market of artisan food stalls, craft vendors, and the Creole Tomato sauce that is a Louisiana pantry essential) and a final beignet at Café Du Monde. Take home Zatarain's crab boil seasoning, Community Coffee (the chicory blend that makes café au lait correctly), Tabasco from Avery Island (a 45-minute drive west of New Orleans, where the pepper sauce has been made since 1868), and a bottle of Sazerac rye (the whiskey that makes the Sazerac cocktail, invented in New Orleans in 1838). New Orleans is the only American city that genuinely requires multiple visits — each trip uncovers a neighborhood, a restaurant, and a music venue you missed last time.