New Orleans hands out its best material for free: brass bands on Royal Street, Sunday second-lines rolling through Tremé, and cemetery oaks in City Park. With a $3 streetcar day pass and a $9 po-boy, three days here cost less than one night in most US cities.
1,300 acres — larger than Central Park — with the world's largest stand of mature live oaks, some 800 years old. Couturie Forest trails climb Laborde Mountain, the highest natural point in the city at 43 feet. Grounds free, open dawn to dusk daily.
Royal Street closes to cars 11:00-16:00 between St Louis and St Ann, turning into a free stage for brass bands, washboard players and tap dancers. The antique galleries let you walk in and look at $40,000 chandeliers with zero pressure.
The ferry crosses the Mississippi in 10 minutes for $2 each way, delivering the postcard skyline view that tour boats charge $45 for. Algiers Point on the far bank is a quiet 1800s neighbourhood of shotgun houses that survived the 1895 fire.
The 1833 cemetery sits in the Garden District, where antebellum mansions built on sugar and cotton money line Prytania and First Street. Anne Rice's old house at 1239 First is on the route. Self-guided walking costs nothing.
Open since 1911 on the Bayou St John, Parkway sells the roast beef po-boy that defines the genre — gravy-soaked, served on Leidenheimer bread. A regular runs about $12 and feeds two people. Cash and card, closed Tuesdays.
A restored 1875 seafood market in the Bywater now housing a dozen stalls under one roof. Individual plates run $8-15, well below Quarter prices, and the communal marble tables mean you can share a table with locals on lunch break.
Operating on this site since 1791, the covered flea market at the Esplanade end sells hot sauce, pralines and Mardi Gras beads for a few dollars. The produce arcade has free samples of Creole tomatoes and satsumas in season.
Bywater Bakery does king cake year-round and $6 breakfast sandwiches. Two blocks away, Vaughan's Lounge is a corner dive where Thursday nights historically meant free red beans and rice with the band — $5 beers and no cover most nights.
The oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, running since 1835 in green Perley Thomas cars from 1923. The full run to Carrollton and back takes 90 minutes past Audubon Park, Tulane and the Garden District mansions.
The park's 1.8-mile jogging loop winds under live oaks planted for the 1884 World's Fair. Behind the zoo, the Fly is a stretch of levee grass where locals grill and watch container ships pass at eye level on the Mississippi.
Housed in the 1835 Mint, the only building to have minted both US and Confederate coinage. Admission is $8 for adults, and the third-floor performance space hosts free concerts several afternoons a week. Closed Mondays.
A 1.4-mile linear park on a former wharf, reached by the arched steel Piety Street bridge locals call the Rusty Rainbow. Concrete steps drop straight to the river's edge for the best free downtown skyline view at sunset.