[ Summer Travel ]

New Orleans is a giant, outdoor museum, one big block party, a never-ending concert, and a gourmet paradise.

With glorious parades, brassy bands, haunted houses, historic streetcars and paddlewheelers, a world-class zoo, festivals for every occasion, a top-five aquarium and nationally recognized children’s museum, gourmet snowballs, the French Market, the National D-Day Museum, and Six Flags theme park. The list is long, the fun unlimited, and the food sensational.

Ageless Kid Stuff
Three words about the Musée Conti Wax Museum at 917 Conti St.: Kids love it. They’re enthralled by frenzied voodoo dancers, ghost stories, and Napoleon giving Louisiana away while enthroned in his bath.

The Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres, preserves a 19thcentury trove of apothecary artifacts, voodoo powders, live leeches, and deliciously icky stuff. Get a bead on Mardi Gras culture. A free ferry ride across the river to Algiers and a free shuttle delivers the would-be krewe to Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World. There, the whole family can dress up in authentic carnival krewe costumes (more sequins than a Liberace ensemble). See the technicolor floats, props, and artists in the act of creating them.

Into the Deep
Stroll along the river via Moon Walk and Woldenberg Park, about 3 blocks, or hop the Riverfront Streetcar to the Aquarium of the Americas. It’s an underwater adventure that ranks among the top five in the U.S. Over a million gallons of water and habitats of the Caribbean Sea, the Amazon Rainforest, the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico hold 15,000 aquatic species. Pet a shark, take a picture in the faux shark’s jaw, and walk the undersea tunnel.

Zoo to Do
Board the John James Audubon Cruise to Audubon Park and the acclaimed Zoo. Or go a different way: pile the gang onto the St. Charles Streetcar, the world’s oldest continuously operating street railway and a National Historic Landmark.

The route passes through the Garden District and Uptown past MTV’s Real World Belfort Mansion and architectural rarities like the wedding cake house (a private residence at 5809 St. Charles). Next stop, Audubon Park.

Audubon is an interactive zoo. Near the gate, opposite the flamingos, frequent animal demos let the kids see and pet wild things up close. At Monkey Hill, little tykes roll, run, and jump through a playground with a giant spider’s web and a swingin’ rope bridge. In the wilds of the Jaguar Jungle young explorers excavate faux artifacts and climb mysterious, pseudoancient rock walls.

See a swamp in the city! The Cajun Swamp is inhabited by a variety of aquatic and land creatures including white alligators and huge rodents.Watch them all from the swampland café and rock out to Cajun music at the Swamp Café. Or just rock in the comfy veranda chairs.

Arts District
Across Canal Street, the Central Business & Arts District
is crammed with activities. Everyone loves the hands-on exhibits at the world-class Louisiana Children’s Museum at 420 Julia Street. Kids become news reporters, broadcasting before a live camera, they shop at a pintsized grocery store (with itsy-bitsy carts), climb a rock wall, learn how much fun science is and what it’s like to be inside a bubble, shades of Oz.

The New Orleans School of Glassmaking, 727 Magazine, offers dramatic live demonstrations, classes, and interactive workshops in glass-blowing, copper enamel, silversmithing, bead making, and the printer’s arts.
Spectacular.

The National D-Day Museum at 945 Magazine St. is a national treasure, holding the global history and personal memories of WWII and the people who fought for freedom. Interactive galleries and maps, thousands of artifacts, individual accounts, and films document WWII from Europe to the Pacific.

Before you get started exploring New Olreans, drop by the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau Visitor Center at 2020 St. Charles Avenue or the French Quarter location at 529 St. Ann Street.

Next