A Spring Travel Guide to New Orleans

While visitors flocked to New Orleans to take part in the country’s largest Mardi Gras celebration at the beginning of March this year, the coming of spring also heralds plenty of other activities and events for travelers to enjoy, and the pleasant weather makes discovering everything the historic city offers even better.

Spring is one of the best seasons to visit New Orleans, because its average temperatures are generally milder than much of the rest of the year, with highs in the high seventies and lows in the fifties. April and May are also the driest months of the year, with four rain days each on average.

So while you can count on spring to be dry and warm, there’s also no limit to the fun events travelers and residents alike enjoy.

The French Quarter Festival is a great one for travelers because it offers a high-energy event in the city’s historic French Quarter, filled with delicious local food and live entertainment, including its music scene. It’s expected to draw thousands who will enjoy booths with local food vendors, stages with live music, parades and events within the local French Quarter businesses themselves.

More than twenty stages are set up within the French Quarter, showcasing talent ranging from jazz and brass bands to Latin and international genres; the festival’s website says it employs a stunning 1,700 local musicians the entire weekend! Music lovers are going to want to write this down: this year the festival will be held on April 21-24.

For history lovers, a walk through the French Quarter and a wander through the city can be a lesson in history itself, with architecture dating back to the 1700s. Travelers can experience the city’s multicultural history in a variety of ways, from attending local events, visiting historic bars and restaurants or taking one of the many historical tours the city has on offer. But a special exhibit can take a traveler much, much farther back in history this spring, all the way back to ancient Egypt.

The New Orleans Museum of Art, or NOMA, is the city’s oldest fine arts institution and is home to over 40,000 pieces of art, with special exhibits on Japanese, African and French works, as well as a gorgeous 12-acre outdoor sculpture garden that is not to be missed. Between March 18 and July 17, it’s also home to the “Queen Nefertari’s Egypt” exhibit, with 230 items showcasing one of the most notable women of ancient Egypt.

New Orleans is the final stop of the exhibit’s tour throughout the U.S., so travelers who want to see it before the artifacts go back to their permanent homes will have to see it at NOMA.

Lastly, the two-weekend New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, nicknamed Jazz Fest, will be held in New Orleans from April 29 through May 8 of this year. With more live music and parades than you can count, as well as delicious Louisiana dishes and handmade arts and crafts, the festival celebrates the state’s culture while providing a wide variety of musical styles and performances for festival-goers to enjoy.

The Jazz Fest’s notable past performers include the Foo Fighters, Jimmy Buffet, Lionel Richie, Lauren Daigle, Norah Jones and many more of both local and international renown.

Travelers wanting to enjoy the perfect spring weather in New Orleans can take advantage of bike rentals and some of the city’s coolest parks. City Park is a massive park within the city, with two sculpture gardens, a lake and plenty of recreational activities to enjoy, including just wandering under the Spanish moss-laden live oaks.

The Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Reserve is a short drive away from the city, but offers over 24,000 acres of explorable land and bayou for families and couples to enjoy learning about the unique ecosystem and the animals and plants that live there. Travelers who visit during late spring and early summer can enjoy the beautiful water hyacinths in full bloom throughout the reserve.