1. New Orleans: Garden District Tour with Elms Mansion Access
Immerse yourself in the opulence of the Old South in this tour of New Orleans’ prettiest neighborhood with an expert local guide. Your historic Garden District tour begins on a sweet note with a behind-the-scenes visit to an old praline-makers shop. Here you will learn how New Orleans’ most famous confection was brought to the city from Europe, and will even be able to taste one hot out of the copper pots. Next, you’ll hop onto a street car with all-inclusive tickets and zip down St. Charles Avenue, en-route to the Garden District. This area of grand mansions and wide, tree-lined streets is home to some of the best-preserved, pre-Civil-War mansions in America, as well as a slew of celebrity homes. Your guide will introduce you to the history of the area, as you see the grand mansions built by wealthy plantation-owners and now owned by famous people such as Beyonce and Sandra Bullock. Along the way, you’ll stop off at one of America’s most unique graveyards, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. You’ll also learn about the practical difficulties of running a cemetery below sea level. For the highlight of the tour, you will step inside the Elms Mansion, a 150-year-old Italianate home that is one of the most impressive in the city. As you tour the opulent rooms, you will learn about the businessmen and plantation owners who built these stately residences, and the wealthy world that they created in New Orleans before the Civil War. Your tour ends in the mansion’s beautiful garden, with an ice cold glass of lemonade or sweet tea in the shade of the largest magnolia tree in the south.