Jazz, Creole cooking and the French Quarter
New Orleans feels like nowhere else in the United States. The French Quarter's wrought-iron balconies overlook Jackson Square and St Louis Cathedral, and live music spills out of the clubs on Frenchmen Street every night. The cooking is its own tradition: gumbo, jambalaya, po'boys, crawfish in season and beignets dusted in sugar at Café du Monde. Ride the St Charles streetcar through the oak-lined Garden District to see grand antebellum houses and the above-ground tombs of Lafayette Cemetery. Mardi Gras is famous, but the city celebrates something almost every month.