New Orleans sightseeing city tour

Most people looking for a New Orleans sightseeing city tour picture one thing: a guide, the French Quarter and a cathedral. The listings split that picture into eight separate tours, and they differ more than the word “sightseeing” suggests — in how you move, which district you see, and whether a cemetery is part of the route.

The French Quarter on foot is the cheapest of the eight. The small-group storytelling walk, $33, takes two hours past St. Louis Cathedral and into hidden courtyards behind historic buildings, and with 1,498 reviews at 4.8 it is the most-reviewed of the eight. If walking is not the point, the mule-drawn carriage passes the same cathedral and Jackson Square in one hour for $65.

The Garden District is a different neighbourhood and a different story. Two guided walks go there, both two hours. The one at $35 (4.9 from 638 reviews) passes mansions and gardens and looks inside Lafayette Cemetery. The one at $45 (5.0 from 32 reviews) is about the people who made their fortunes in cotton, sugarcane and shipping, and their 19th-century homes, some owned by celebrities.

On wheels there are four choices. Two hop-on hop-off buses: the $47 ticket runs two or three days and adds a walking tour of the Garden District or the French Quarter; the $51 double-decker has live commentary on board. The $55 bus tour lasts 2 hours 15 minutes in an air-conditioned coach with a licensed guide and stops at an above-ground cemetery. The $55 bike tour takes three hours, from the historic core down Esplanade Ridge under live oaks.

Cemeteries are their own category here. The walk inside St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, $25 for 55 minutes, leads to the resting place of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and has 1,889 reviews. After dark, a $36 bus tour takes you into an above-ground cemetery and shows you how to use an EMF detector. Three French Quarter ghost walks, at $30, $33 and $37, are storytelling tours; one of them changes its story selection every week.

The two most-reviewed tours on this site are both on the river. The evening steamboat jazz cruise has 5,432 reviews and the daytime one 4,744; each is two hours on the Mississippi, with a meal as an option — a Creole lunch by day ($44), a dinner buffet in the evening ($58). A second evening boat, at $60, offers jazz aboard and an optional Creole dinner.

Beyond the city are the swamps and the plantations. A covered pontoon boat at $31 and an airboat from Lafitte at $50 both list alligators and birds among what you look for; the 16-passenger high-speed airboat at $65 has 2,879 reviews. Oak Alley alone is $75 for 5.5 hours. Whitney Plantation, a museum dedicated to the history of slavery, is $89 with transportation. The combos that pair a plantation with an airboat run 5.5 to 8.5 hours, $152 to $179.

Food is the last strand: a $43 Cajun and Creole demonstration class with a 3 or 4-course meal and the recipes, French Quarter food walks at $67 and $85, and four cocktails with six food samples on a four-hour walk at $160. So a plan that works starts with one of the eight sightseeing tours on the first day, then adds what they do not cover: the river, a cemetery, a swamp or a kitchen.