25 Things To Do In New Orleans (from New Orleans to tourists)
1. Watch jazz legend Ellis Marsalis tickle the keys.
2. Tour Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.
3. Suck on a crawfish head.
4. Buy some love potion at Marie Leaveau's House of Voodoo.
5. See an albino alligator.
6. Dance with the band at Rock-N-Bowl.
7. Expose yourself in public.
8. Take a pilgrimage to Preservation Hall.
9. Catch a Zulu coconut at Mardi Gras.
10.Have your fortune told in Jackson Square.
11. Drive across the Causeway for an Abita beer.
12. Act as your own tour guide.
13. Go antiquing on Magazine Street.
14. Wander among the tombs at Lafayette Cemetery.
15. Explore Oak Alley Plantation.
16. Order a drive-through Daquiri.
17. Cool off with a New Orleans snowball.
18. Tour Longue Vue House and Gardens.
19. Crash the Orpheuscapade.
20. Down a Jacques-Imo's Café po boy.
21. Break a sweat at the Maple Leaf.
22. Take the Zoo Cruise.
23. Spend Christmas in New Orleans.
24. Go to Jazzfest.
25. Request Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine's.
This is stupid. I've done most of the stuff and some of what I haven't done is because it's illegal (such as exposing yourself in public). A huge chunk of that list isn't even in New Orleans. They don't throw coconuts at Zulu anymore. The oysters at Antoine's are no different than the oysters at any shack in Lakeview or on the Northshore or in the Quarter. The jazz clubs are ratty, the riverboats are hot, the Mississippi is trashed.
Things To Do In New Orleans (from me to the rest of the world)
1. Stay in your hotel.
I don't think I can go back there. I hated it there and I got out; it seems absolute proof to me that there is no true God, no fairness in life, when people who were completely in love with the city drowned in their attics, starved in the Superdome, or were shot by looters in their homes. The levees aren't fixed - they weren't ever fixed to begin with. I don't want other people to go back there. Tourists stay in the Quarter, which was practically completely the same after Katrina as it was before. No one ever went to St. Bernard or Chalmette or New Orleans East before Katrina, why would they go now when all the flora's dead and the air still smells like rotting flesh? I just want people to leave the city alone. It's just a wasteland. The government doesn't care. Individual people cannot save the city. Just let it die in peace.