What should I avoid in New Orleans?

Bourbon Street between Canal and St. Ann is the single biggest time-sink for first-timers. The bars sell 32-ounce frozen daiquiris for $18 that taste like melted popsicles and Red Bull. The music bleeding out of every doorway sounds the same after three blocks, all cover bands playing "Sweet Home Alabama" to crowds from Omaha. Walk four blocks east to Frenchmen Street in the Marigny and you'll hear New Orleans jazz for free, spilling out of the Spotted Cat Music Club and d.b.a. where the players still sit in with each other past midnight. The smell of stale beer on Bourbon at 2am is something you carry on your shoes for days. That said, Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop near the quieter end of Bourbon is worth a single drink in the candlelit back room. One drink, then leave.

The "I bet I know where you got your shoes" routine runs on the blocks surrounding Jackson Square. A man approaches, makes the bet, then tells you "you got them on your feet, on Bourbon Street" and demands $20. It is not dangerous, but it will cost you 10 minutes. Near strip clubs south of Canal on Bourbon, doormen offer "free entry" and "free drinks." The drinks arrive as a $300 credit card charge, and the bouncers become less friendly when you try to dispute it. New Orleans scores 3.8 out of 10 for solo-traveler safety (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index). After dark, avoid walking alone through Central City, the blocks around Claiborne Avenue between the Caesars Superdome and I-10, and anywhere east of Esplanade past North Rampart. Stick to the well-lit stretches of the French Quarter, the Warehouse District, and the Garden District's main corridors on St. Charles Avenue.

September in New Orleans feels like standing inside someone's mouth. The feels-like temperature currently pushes past 37°C, and that wet heaviness does not break until late October. Afternoon thunderstorms roll in around 3pm most days, hard enough to flood low-lying intersections on Broad Street and along the Lafitte Greenway within 20 minutes. Mosquitoes are aggressive near City Park and along Bayou St. John after dusk. Bring DEET, not citronella. Hurricane season peaks in September, and while a direct hit is unlikely in any given year, tropical storms can shut down Louis Armstrong International for 2 to 3 days with little warning. Mind you, locals treat hurricane watches the way Midwesterners treat tornado watches. That does not mean you should.

Skip any restaurant on Decatur Street between the square and the French Market that has a host standing outside waving a laminated menu. The jambalaya at those places tends to taste like canned tomatoes and Old Bay, and they charge $22 for it. Walk 10 minutes uptown to Cochon on Tchoupitoulas Street for Cajun food that smells like wood smoke and rendered pork fat, where the boudin costs $14 and the rabbit tastes like it was in a field last week. For beignets, Café Du Monde has a 45-minute line most mornings. Morning Call in City Park serves the same fried dough, dusted with the same snowdrift of powdered sugar, with a 5-minute wait and a view of the live oaks. Worth noting, the café au lait at both places uses chicory, which has a roasted, almost chocolate-adjacent bitterness that might catch you off guard if you are expecting diner coffee.