It may sound expensive to be a tourist in a town that’s hosting two of the biggest events of the new year — Mardi Gras and the NFL Super Bowl — but New Orleans has plenty of free things to do, actually.
Discover the free stuff that you can do in the nearly 300-year-old French city!
1. ATTEND MARDI GRAS AND VISIT BOURBON STREET
Attend one of the biggest free parties in the world: New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. Catch parades with costumed riders, marching bands and decorated floats that will last for a week. But visitors can catch the madness and revelry of Carnival any time of year on Bourbon Street. It’s also home for live music, coming from clubs with doors and windows flung open, flooding the street.
2. EXPLORE JACKSON SQUARE
Street performers, artists painting on canvas, clowns making balloon animals, and jazz musicians are just some of the free entertainments you can find in Jackson Square. One can definitely hang out in this one-block section of the French Quarter anchored by a lush green space with benches set amid gardens and grand oak trees. The square also has restaurants, storefronts and upper-level balconies boasting decorative ironwork. You can also marvel at the architecture of the square’s historic buildings like the Cabildo and Pontalba Apartments, the oldest apartment buildings in the country.
Visitors can go directly to St. Louis Cathedral, built since 1720. Its towering white facade with three steeples fronts the Mississippi River. Inside, you can find religious mosaics, colorful stained glass and a small gift shop. Masses are held daily and free concerts are held regularly.
3. HAVE FUN IN CITY PARK
Explore City Park, the largest green space in New Orleans with more than 1,300 acres of gardens, lagoons and walking trails set amid centuries-old oak trees draped in Spanish moss and filled with birds.
Just beyond the New Orleans Museum of Art are dozens of sculptures you can see for free in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, valued at more than $25 million. Among the artists represented are Antoine Bourdelle, Gaston Lachaise, Henry Moore, Jacques Lipchitz, Barbara Hepworth and Seymour Lipton.
4. RIDE THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER FERRY
Riding a ferry is one of the unique ways to get a look at the New Orleans skyline and the Mississippi River’s daily parade of river barges, steamships and cruise ships. The Algiers Point ferry, which has been in operation since the early 1800s, is free to pedestrians. It runs every 30 minutes between the landing at the foot of Canal Street near the Aquarium of the Americas and the historic Algiers Point neighborhood directly across the river from the French Quarter.
Victorian-style homes, magnolia tree-lined streets with several parks, cafes, historic churches and bars with live music are abundant in Algiers Point. Visitors can also enjoy a free self-guided tour of the Algiers Point neighborhood with the help of an online brochure from the Algiers Historical Society.
5. STROLL TRHOUGH THE FRENCH MARKET
Enjoy the smell of sweet pralines and freshly-brewed coffee in the New Orleans French Market. The market is a mix of open-air retail spaces dotted with fresh produce stands and enclosed stores with clothing and jewelry. It’s an ideal destination for window-shopping and people-watching. Visitors can also watch candy-makers mix up batches of pralines, a New Orleans treat made with brown sugar and pecans.
