95. Your New Orleans Vacation Awaits: Mardi Gras, Jazz, and Culinary Delights

Did the recent Superbowl in New Orleans get you thinking about taking a trip there? The Big Easy is the go-to destination for Mardi Gras, jazz, and culinary delights like beignets and po'boys! In this episode, I go over the best time to visit, activities for football fans and culture enthusiasts, and detail the delicious foods that you don't want to miss! 

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Transcript

Hello, jetsetters, and welcome back to another episode of Jetsetting with Me. We are here at episode 95. Did you watch all the Super Bowl hopela? How many Taylor Swift sightings did you count? But most importantly, what was happening outside the Superdome in terms of visits to New Orleans. I got to see lots of people, influencers strutting their fashion, showing off their food, and, well, it really inspired me. But quickly before we go to NOLA, this is episode 95, which means in just five more weeks, I am having a celebration with gifts, and you are the recipient for my very special hundredth episode. If you wanna be eligible to win, even one lucky winner can win up to $300 in travel perks for a future vacation. You have to register at the link in the show notes. And now, on to the show.

So New Orleans is a great place to see a football game. I mean, after all, it has hosted the Super Bowl more times than any other city except Miami. And the Superdome's 8 time hosting is the most of any other venue. And why is that? Well, New Orleans is actually very centrally located. It's pretty easy to get to from almost anywhere. It's got great air transit, and, believe it or not, here in Central Texas, we've driven it a time or two. One Reddit reader commented about New Orleans that, quote, everything is within walking distance of the Superdome, the convention center. The weather is great, and the culture is unmatched.

Plus, there's the food. Well, I, Michelle, your favorite jet setting extra AF gal, has to agree with that. So let's talk quickly about a few of those things that that Reddit reader commented about. So when is the best time to go? Well, that would be right now. February, the weather in New Orleans is beautiful. Highs are in the low to mid sixties, and it doesn't get much colder than the mid forties. So what many of us who live in either climate that is too hot year round or too cold in February would consider this to be ideal. And it works well for a city that hosts Mardi Gras usually in February, but sometimes early March.

And if you want to go to Mardi Gras and you wanna see what are commonly called the best of the best parades, you wanna go the weekend before Fat Tuesday and then stay through that day. So travel and leisure ranks February through May as the best time of year to visit the big easy and see the city in all its glory. And if you do want to visit during a season with lighter crowds, but a lot more humidity, then than you're gonna wanna visit during the summer. Let's talk a bit about the culture. Well, you can't really talk about the culture of New Orleans without mentioning those two words, Mardi Gras. It was something that I felt that I needed to do. Granted, it was in my early twenties, but now I've been there, done that. I literally almost died from a crowd surge when people got in a fight on the French Quarter, and no need to ever find those pictures of my roommate and I experiencing our one and only Mardi Gras.

I'm not sure she's ever been back, to be honest, but I'm gonna go with our one and only Mardi Gras. If you wanna experience the beauty of the floats and the revelry, you can actually avoid the madness that is the French Quarter and have what I would consider to be a better time than I had. But because of the popularity of going at this time of the year, you have to start planning, like, well, yesterday, way in advance reservation. So let's chat about next year, shall we? The best advice is to do Mardi Gras like a local. Stay at a hotel along Saint Charles uptown. It puts you directly on the main parade route. It allows for prime viewing of the parades and easy access to the action. Yes.

You will get beads. But you don't have to navigate the large and very over drunk crowds in the French Quarter. You can simply walk out of your hotel and watch the festivities roll by on one of the most iconic streets in the city. Saint Charles is in a charming neighborhood called the Garden District, and it's known for its beautiful historic architecture. The gardens that are inside the hotels, they well, you might feel like you're in Paris about a hundred years ago. It provides a very unique New Orleans atmosphere, and you can easily reach the French Quarter via the streetcar line. It runs right along Saint Charles, and during Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest and other football large sporting events, you can't drive or park in along the French Quarter anyway. Hotels like the Four Seasons and the Virgin Hotel make great choices for your luxury Mardi Gras visit.

You know I love a good theme, so Virgin creates Mardi Gras signature cocktails, and the four season decorates for that carnival season. Their package is even called Mardi Gras Like a Local. It includes two parade viewing stand passes, a dining reservation, a bar tab, and this is my favorite part, you get a carnival concierge. I'm kinda dying to know what a carnival concierge is and does that is even better than a regular concierge. Another part of the culture of New Orleans is its football. We love them saints. Who dat? But there's college. There's playoff championships.

There's Super Bowls. New Orleans has it all. And, of course, me being me, it is for football that I have visited the most, not Mardi Gras. In this case, staying near the Superdome makes life easiest. Although, for us, we actually stayed further away from the Superdome, but we purchased great parking. Easy in, easy out. We didn't get caught in traffic on the out. I was very relieved.

It was so close to one of the entrances online, and we then drove in from our hotel for the game and had our guaranteed parking. It was perfect. And the Superdome, I have to say, is a beautiful venue. I mean, it's domed, so it's temperature controlled. The food was really good. And aside from the fact that the last time I was there, my Longhorns lost, it's really fun. Every seat is a good seat, I'm convinced. And besides sports and Mardi Gras, Nola does boast plenty of other reasons to visit.

I mentioned Jazzfest. Jazzfest is now Jazzfest and the New Orleans Heritage Festival, so lots of stuff to do around there. There's a historical trips like the Nottoway Plantation, which my very first trip to New Orleans, it is the largest remaining plantation in the South. It's now a resort, and they actually call it the Nottoway Plantation And Resort. So I'm gonna say out on a limb here, they don't do a really good job discussing the history of the plantation and how it was built for the Randolph family by enslaved African people. Although, fun fact, Randolph was born in Virginia, and you heard me mention him before when I visited his father's home, his childhood home in Williamsburg, and that's episode 91. But if you do your own history, they do have a museum, they have an audio tour, they do have tour guides, you can get enough of what life was like for both the enslaved people and the other people who lived on and around the Nottoway Plantation. It is also very picturesque, I do wanna say.

But I think I would draw the line at staying at the, quote, Nottoway Plantation And Resort. So now, maybe you've read one of the many books that takes place in New Orleans, you've watched NCIS New Orleans, or you've seen The Princess and the Frog, and you really just wanna experience a city that is known as the Big Easy. It's known that because of its easygoing lifestyle, its music, and its very rich cultural heritage. I have a fellow travel advisor who I met, actually, on my Laplands tour, and we are collaborating on our Laplands tour in 2026. She lives in New Orleans, and I got to talk to her on the phone today. And I asked her what is the number one reason that she tells people to come visit her in New Orleans, and she said, the food and the people. So don't miss the French Quarter, the Garden District, the locals. They're gonna show up and show out no matter when you go.

Of course, the food. Now, I can't keep you here another whole hour discussing the food, but New Orleans put the foodie in foodie destination. And lucky for us, you do not need reservations at anywhere fancy to get the three most famous foods, the beignet. Now, you only think you've had a beignet until you are at line at Cafe Du Monde, which is the oldest coffee shop in New Orleans, and you smell the fry. You feel it on your skin. You can ask for your beignets any way you like, but they're only gonna come to you served as fried dough, no filling, and covered in powdered sugar. And don't forget that hot cup of coffee. It's also only served black or cafe au lait.

That's it. They just started serving soda in the past year. Don't forget your cash either because the original store in the French market is still a cash only establishment. I had to check that fact because most places today are no cash establishments. But sure enough, it is still cash only. Now the next most thing that many say New Orleans is famous for is the poor po'boy sandwich, not gumbo. I think there could be some arguments on that, but the po'boy was coined in the early great depression by Hungary striking street car employees in New Orleans. Now where should you get your po'boy when you visit? There is no one answer, and every review site, Yelp, e like, all of them, Travelpedia, they all have a different answer.

But I'll tell you where the locals go. They go to Domalice's Publoor and Bar. Now you have to know where to look because it's easy to miss the more than 100 year old establishment with its hand painted sign. Now I did mention gumbo, and some people would definitely argue it's not the po'boy, but the seafood gumbo, which makes New Orleans food scene what it is. Gumbo is somewhere between a soup and a stew. It's a blend of rue, which is flour and fat that's cooked until it's brown, stock, the Louisiana seasoning trinity of bell peppers, onion, and celery. And usually, it's got seafood in it, but it can have meat. Most people also love the hot and spicy kick to it, so I'm gonna be honest.

I have a shellfish allergy, and I don't like spice. Gumbo's not usually my thing. But one local chef, who says her momma's is the best gumbo, tells the rest of us to go to Brighton's. Their chef owner, Frank Bryson, trained under the late chef Paul Prudhomme. And if you're like me and you know celebrity chefs, you've heard of chef Paul Prudhomme. He is actually credited with introducing Cajun cuisine to the masses. But beware, chef Bryson will only serve seafood gumbo on special occasions like Lent. Truly, I have not even scratched the surface.

We could talk red beans and rice, the muffalata, jambalaya, good old fashioned crawfish boil, and oysters. But I have to mention my sentimental spots where I relish all my food memories. My first trip to New Orleans was after my senior year in high school, and that's where my father taught me to eat oysters, right out of the shell, where you put the hot sauce on them and you just suck them out. I had one, and I've never had another one since. But I also got my first taste of Bananas Foster at the place where it originated in Brennan's for brunch. We had our brandy milk, which I still love to this day. There's the New Orleans Visitors Bureau says this about Galatua's. If Friday lunch at Galatua's isn't on your lifelong culinary bucket list, then it's time to add it.

There's something about that space. It really does radiate fun. The original dining room houses some of the most coveted tables in the city, especially on the Fridays before Halloween and Christmas. You can expect classic Creole cuisine. Think shrimp romelade, crab meat, turtle soup. It's especially festive if you're celebrating a special day. You are guaranteed a full restaurant sing along with maximum enthusiasm. And, of course, I definitely remember my dad telling them it was my graduation.

There is truly nowhere else like New Orleans food anywhere in the world. Have I made you hungry? Then perhaps a trip to New Orleans should be on your radar. And although football season and the Super Bowl are behind us, Mardi Gras this year isn't until March 4. So if you're willing to stay slightly outside the city, we can still plan your last minute trip. Or let's put it off a few months until Jazz Fest and the New Orleans Heritage Festival, or anytime you wanna experience a long weekend in the Big Easy. It is never too early to start planning for the sugar bowl in 2026. And until next time, jet setters, safe travels.