New Orleans is built for the party of one: bars where the bartender is the host, food halls with shared tables, and porches where strangers talk. These three days stick to walkable, well-lit neighbourhoods and places where a solo seat is the normal seat.
A 1.4-mile linear park built on the old Mississippi wharves, entered by the rust-steel arch bridge at Piety Street. Open 6am–7:30pm daily, free. Joggers, dog walkers and river barges keep it populated without ever feeling crowded.
An 1875 seafood market rebuilt as a food hall with a dozen independent stalls circling a central bar. Communal tables make a table-for-one unremarkable. Plates run $12–20, open 8am–9pm most days, cocktails from the middle bar.
Ride the St Charles streetcar ($1.25 exact fare) to Washington Avenue and walk the 1850s mansion blocks along Prytania and First Street, then drift down Magazine for independent bookshops, vintage stores and coffee. Wide sidewalks, constant daylight foot traffic.
A Bywater corner wine shop where you choose a bottle inside ($22–40 plus $10 corkage), then carry it to the string-lit gravel backyard. Live jazz duos play from about 7pm nightly and the picnic tables are shared by default.
A small shotgun-house museum holding the world's largest collection of Mardi Gras Indian suits, jazz funeral photographs and social aid club regalia. Staff are neighbourhood members who talk you through every beaded panel. Tue–Sat 10am–4pm, $10.
A 1797 Creole townhouse turned bar, all peeling plaster and ceiling fans, where the warm muffuletta and a Pimm's Cup at the long wooden bar is the classic solo order. Open from 11am, muffuletta half around $16, Pimm's Cup $10.
Demonstration classes in a restored 1830s molasses warehouse on St Louis Street: gumbo, jambalaya and pralines cooked in front of you with a Louisiana history running commentary. Roughly $40 for a demo, $150 hands-on, drinks included.
A 24-hour neighbourhood dive on the Bywater edge where karaoke runs nightly and the crowd is bartenders, nurses and musicians coming off shift. No cover, beer around $4, songs go to whoever signs the book.
A 2.6-mile paved rail-trail from the edge of the Quarter to Bayou St John, following the 1794 Carondelet Canal route. Blue Bikes cost about $0.20 per minute or $10 for a day pass; docks sit at both ends and murals line the middle stretch.
A 1911 bakery on Hagan Avenue that became the city's benchmark po-boy counter, sitting right on Bayou St John. Roast beef debris po-boy runs about $13; you order at the window, take a number and eat outside at picnic tables.
Eleven acres of live oaks, lagoons and 90-plus sculptures beside the New Orleans Museum of Art — free to enter, open daily from 10am. NOMA itself costs about $15 and holds strong Louisiana and West African collections.
The Canal Street ferry crosses to Algiers Point in about 12 minutes for $2, giving the best free-ish skyline view in the city. Walk the levee path on the far bank, then take the return boat as the lights come on downtown.