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New Orleans, Louisiana

A multi-day deep dive built around the National WWII Museum — one of the most acclaimed history museums in the world — anchored to a 3–4 day base in the French Quarter / Warehouse District. NOLA is the rare American city that braids together French + Spanish + American colonial history, the Louisiana Purchase, the Atlantic slave trade and the plantation economy, the birth of jazz, hurricane science and levee engineering, and a globally significant WWII museum into a single walkable trip.

New Orleans, Louisiana

A multi-day deep dive built around the National WWII Museum — one of the most acclaimed history museums in the world — anchored to a 3–4 day base in the French Quarter / Warehouse District. NOLA is the rare American city that braids together French + Spanish + American colonial history, the Louisiana Purchase, the Atlantic slave trade and the plantation economy, the birth of jazz, hurricane science and levee engineering, and a globally significant WWII museum into a single walkable trip.

Scope note: this template covers steps 1–3 of the adventures pipeline (identify, support Maxine's research, shape goals). The deliverable webpage

  • video at step 6 is Maxine's own work — don't scaffold it here.

Links & Maps

Official:

Maps:

Reference & background:

Must-See / Big Items

Priority list, ranked roughly by importance/payoff. This is a museum-heavy city; pace it.

  1. National WWII Museum — the whole campus — This is the centerpiece and the reason most thoughtful homeschool families come to NOLA. Founded by historian Stephen Ambrose as the National D-Day Museum (NOLA was where Andrew Higgins built the LCVP "Higgins boats" that landed troops at Normandy). Now seven pavilions on a seven-acre campus. Plan a full day, minimum. Don't try to combine with anything else demanding the same day.

  2. WWII Museum: Louisiana Memorial Pavilion — the original building. Houses the actual Higgins boat (LCVP), the Train Car immersive entry experience (you receive a "dog tag" tied to a real WWII service member and follow their story), the Arsenal of Democracy: The Herman and George R. Brown Salute to the Home Front exhibit on the wartime industrial mobilization, and the Solomon Victory Theater (home of "Beyond All Boundaries").

  3. WWII Museum: Campaigns of Courage Pavilion — Road to Berlin & Road to Tokyo — the two narrative galleries that walk you chronologically through the European and Pacific theaters with reconstructed environments (frozen Ardennes forest, North African desert, Pacific jungle), oral histories, and artifact-heavy exhibits. Pace yourself — these are dense.

  4. WWII Museum: US Freedom Pavilion — The Boeing Center — the big-iron pavilion. Restored aircraft suspended at multiple levels (B-17 Flying Fortress My Gal Sal, B-25 Mitchell, P-51 Mustang, F4U Corsair, SBD Dauntless, TBM Avenger), Sherman tank, M3 half-track. Catwalks let you walk up alongside the planes.

  5. WWII Museum: Liberation Pavilion — opened November 2023, the newest building. Covers the end of the war and its consequences: liberation of the concentration camps, war crimes trials (Nuremberg, Tokyo), refugees and displaced persons, the founding of the UN, decolonization, the Cold War, and the war's legacy on civil rights at home. The morally heaviest pavilion — and arguably the most important.

  6. "Beyond All Boundaries" 4D experience (Solomon Victory Theater) — 48 min, narrated by Tom Hanks, with seat-rumbles, snow, smoke, vibrating set pieces. Separate timed ticket (~$9 add-on or $12 combo with Final Mission). Strong production; worth it for a 12-year-old. The companion "Final Mission: USS Tang Submarine Experience" is also worth it — a recreated submarine attack center where everyone gets a job.

  7. Whitney Plantation (Wallace, LA — ~40 min west of New Orleans) — The essential moral counterweight to the "antebellum mansion" plantation tours. The only museum in Louisiana focused entirely on the lives of enslaved people. Audio tour (~1 hr 10 min) + restored slave cabins + the Wall of Honor listing every enslaved person documented on the plantation + memorials including the Field of Angels (2,200+ enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish). Plan half a day including drive. Vital pairing with any French Quarter / Garden District visit — those neighborhoods were built on this labor.

  8. Jackson Square + St. Louis Cathedral + The Cabildo + The Presbytère — the historical heart of the city, all on one square. The Cabildo is where the Louisiana Purchase transfer documents were signed (1803) — the room where the size of the United States literally doubled. Now houses Louisiana history exhibits from colonial through Reconstruction. The Presbytère houses two permanent exhibits: Mardi Gras: It's Carnival Time in Louisiana and Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond (the official Katrina exhibit, exceptional — flooded car, Coast Guard rescue helicopter, oral histories, levee-failure engineering). St. Louis Cathedral is the oldest continuously operating cathedral in the US.

  9. French Quarter walking tour (self-guided or with NPS) — The 13-block grid of the Vieux Carré, the original French/Spanish colonial city. The architecture is almost entirely Spanish colonial (after fires in 1788 and 1794 wiped out the French wooden buildings; rebuilt by Spanish governors). Look for: courtyards behind iron gates, carriageways (passages through buildings for horses), the Cornstalk Fence on Royal St, the LaLaurie Mansion (dark history), Madame John's Legacy (one of the few surviving French colonial buildings). The New Orleans Jazz NHP visitor center at 916 N Peters does free ranger talks and music demos.

  10. Preservation Hall (jazz, French Quarter) — Tiny historic music room at 726 St. Peter St. Nightly traditional New Orleans jazz at 5:00, 6:30, and 8:00 PM. All ages welcome. The 5 PM show is the family-friendly entry point. No drinks served inside — pure music. ~45-min sets. This is where you actually hear jazz played by people who learned from people who learned from people who played with King Oliver.

  11. Audubon Aquarium of the Americas + Audubon Insectarium (combined building, Canal St at the Mississippi) — Reopened in 2023 after a major renovation that merged the Aquarium and Insectarium into one campus. Gulf of Mexico tank, Mississippi River tank with rare white alligator, Caribbean reef tunnel, Amazon rainforest, butterfly garden, leafcutter ant colony. ~3 hrs. Lighter day after the WWII Museum.

  12. Mardi Gras World (Blaine Kern Studios) — A working float-building studio you can tour year-round. Tours every 30 min, ~1 hr. Watch sculptors building 30-ft papier-mâché figures for next year's parades. Way more interesting than it sounds — it's an industrial/artistic peek behind a massive cultural phenomenon. Free shuttle from many downtown hotels.

  13. Hurricane Katrina memorial sites + Lower Ninth Ward + Levee Museum — The Presbytère's Living with Hurricanes exhibit is the museum version (see #8). To see the actual ground: take a Lower 9th Ward tour (Gray Line or via lowernine.org, which donates proceeds to rebuilding). Sites include the Industrial Canal levee breach (now reinforced), the Hurricane Katrina Memorial at the former Charity Hospital cemetery (a powerful, often-overlooked memorial to the unclaimed dead), and the 17th Street Canal breach. Powerful, sobering — pair with the engineering / civics research angle, not just the disaster narrative.

  14. New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) + Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden — In City Park, accessible via the Canal St streetcar's NOMA branch. NOMA has strong African, Asian, and decorative-arts collections plus a serious photography holding. The Besthoff Sculpture Garden is free, 11+ acres, ~90 contemporary sculptures (Henry Moore, Frank Stella, Louise Bourgeois, Lynda Benglis, Yayoi Kusama). One of the best free things in the city. Combine with City Park itself: live oaks dripping Spanish moss, lagoons.

  15. Streetcars — The St. Charles line (oldest continuously operating streetcar in the world, vintage 1923 Perley A. Thomas cars) is a moving piece of historical infrastructure. Ride it from Canal St out through the Garden District to Audubon Park and back — $1.25 one-way or $3 day pass. Pure transportation theater.

  16. Garden District walk — Antebellum and Victorian mansions along Prytania, First, Third, Fourth Streets. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 (visible from outside; periodically closed for restoration). Drop off the St. Charles streetcar at Washington Ave and walk a ~1-mile loop. Combine the architecture and money built on slavery lens directly with what you saw at Whitney.

  17. Café du Monde (French Market) — Beignets + chicory coffee since 1862. The original at 800 Decatur is open 7:15 AM to 11 PM (midnight Fri/Sat). Cash only at the original location. Powdered-sugar disaster — wear nothing black.

Stretch goals (do if time allows):

  • Audubon Zoo (separate location, Uptown, near the Riverbend end of the St. Charles streetcar). Strong Louisiana Swamp exhibit with rare white alligators, Asian elephants, jaguar.
  • Frenchmen Street live music (after dark — Spotted Cat, d.b.a., Blue Nile). Family-friendly early in the evening; gets adult-only late.
  • National WWII Museum: John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion — across the street, working restoration shop where volunteers restore PT-305 (the only fully restored, fully operational combat PT boat in the world; rides on Lake Pontchartrain sometimes available — check schedule and book separately).
  • St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (above-ground tombs, Marie Laveau's; guided tour required since 2015).
  • Backstreet Cultural Museum (Tremé — Mardi Gras Indians, Second Line, jazz funerals — small, owner-curated, irreplaceable).
  • Pharmacy Museum (Chartres St — original 1823 apothecary; weird, dense, ~1 hr).
  • The Sazerac House (free distillery / cocktail museum on Canal — strong on NOLA cocktail history, has kid-appropriate exhibits but the tastings are 21+).
  • NPS ranger jazz history walk out of the Jazz NHP visitor center — free, varies by ranger schedule.

Research angles for Maxine

The research is hers — list questions to investigate and sources to start from, not answers. Pitch above grade level.

Hook into Maxine's current interests: (ask before finalizing — what is she into right now? bend the questions to that. If she's into engineering, push the levees / Higgins boat manufacturing angle hard. If she's into music, jazz history is bottomless. If she's into ethics or politics, the Whitney + Liberation Pavilion + Reconstruction triangle is the spine. If she's into design / fashion / theater, Mardi Gras float construction and costume.)

Questions worth chasing:

  • Science (engineering, hurricane meteorology, environmental):

    • How does a Category 5 hurricane actually form, and what makes the Gulf of Mexico such an efficient hurricane engine? What are eyewall replacement cycles and why do they cause rapid intensification?
    • Why did the levees fail in 2005? Was it overtopping, or was it foundation failure / piping under floodwalls? What did the post-mortem (the IPET report, Team Louisiana report, ASCE review) conclude? Why is this distinction politically and engineering-historically critical?
    • What is the difference between a levee, a floodwall, a surge barrier, and a pump station? What has the US Army Corps of Engineers built since 2005 (the $14.5B HSDRRS — Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System), and what storm intensity is it actually designed to withstand?
    • Louisiana is losing a football field of coastal land roughly every 100 minutes. Why? (Subsidence, sediment starvation from Mississippi levees, oil & gas canals, sea-level rise.) What is the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan trying to do about it (sediment diversions, marsh creation)?
    • The Mississippi River wants to switch course to the Atchafalaya basin; the Old River Control Structure is what's preventing that. How does it work? What would happen to New Orleans and Baton Rouge if it failed?

  • History (colonial, WWII, slavery, civil rights):

    • The Louisiana Purchase (1803): Why did Napoleon sell? (Haitian Revolution + the loss of Saint-Domingue + needing money for European wars.) What did Jefferson actually buy — what did the US know about the territory? How was the transfer staged in the Cabildo? What does it mean that the size of the US doubled in one transaction?
    • French → Spanish → French → American: New Orleans changed colonial hands multiple times. What were the differences in legal systems (the Code Noir under France, the more permissive Spanish coartación allowing self-purchase by enslaved people), and why does Louisiana still use Napoleonic civil law instead of English common law?
    • The plantation economy: What did sugar production actually look like at a place like Whitney? Why was sugar more lethal than cotton for enslaved workers? What was the geography of slavery in the lower Mississippi valley?
    • Andrew Higgins and the boats that won the war: Eisenhower said "Andrew Higgins is the man who won the war for us." Why? How did a small-boat builder in New Orleans end up manufacturing 20,000+ LCVPs? What does the Higgins story tell us about industrial mobilization?
    • The Liberation Pavilion's argument: the WWII Museum's newest pavilion explicitly links Allied victory in Europe to the civil rights movement at home. What is that argument? (Double V campaign, Tuskegee Airmen, Japanese internment, the GI Bill's racial exclusions, Smith v. Allwright 1944.) Is it convincing?
    • The Pacific War: how should the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be understood — was it the only alternative to a costly invasion of the home islands, or were there other options? What sources does the WWII Museum's Pacific gallery rely on, and what perspectives are missing?

  • Writing:

    • Read one chapter of Rising Tide by John Barry (the 1927 Mississippi flood, which set the engineering and political pattern that shaped Katrina), and one chapter of The Big Short / Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (the Katrina hospital triage decisions). How do these authors write about catastrophic institutional failure? What rhetorical moves do they share?
    • The WWII Museum uses oral history heavily. Pick three oral history clips from the museum (or from the museum's online collection at https://www.ww2online.org/) and analyze: what does first-person testimony do that a historian's narrative cannot? Where does it fail?
    • Write a piece comparing how Whitney Plantation and the Cabildo each "narrate" Louisiana history. Whose voices are foregrounded in each? Whose are absent?

  • Math:

    • The Higgins boat / Liberty ship production rates were absurd: in 1944, US shipyards launched a new Liberty ship roughly every other day. What does learning-curve math (Wright's law: cost or time per unit drops by a fixed percentage with each doubling of cumulative production) tell us about how this was possible? Compute the implied learning rate.
    • Hurricane storm-surge math: surge height scales roughly with wind speed squared × low-pressure deficit × shallow-shelf geometry. Why is the Louisiana coast geometrically the worst-case shape for surge? (Shallow shelf, funnel shape of the bayous, low-lying delta.) Compare to a steep-shelf coast like Big Sur.
    • Sugar yield math: estimate calories per acre of 19th-century Louisiana sugar vs. modern Iowa corn. The point isn't the number — it's the labor cost per calorie under slavery.

  • Art / Music / Design:

    • The birth of jazz: trace the lineage from West African polyrhythm + brass-band marching music + ragtime + blues + Caribbean influence (the "Spanish tinge" — Jelly Roll Morton's phrase). Why did this specific synthesis happen in this specific city? (Congo Square Sunday gatherings under French/Spanish law, the unusual Creole-of-color class, the proximity of brass-band funerals, the post–Spanish-American-War surplus of brass instruments.)
    • Mardi Gras float design: at Mardi Gras World, look at how a single float is engineered — armature, papier-mâché-over-foam construction, weight distribution for the chassis, theme storytelling across a multi-float "throw." This is theatrical-scale industrial sculpture.
    • Vieux Carré architecture: identify the four classic French Quarter building types — Creole cottage, Creole townhouse, American townhouse, and shotgun. What does each say about who lived there and when?
    • Folk-art memorial at Whitney: the Field of Angels and the Wall of Honor are contemporary memorial art. Compare to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Maya Lin) and the 9/11 Memorial — what does each say with form rather than content?

Starting sources (not exhaustive — she'll find more):

  • WWII Museum online classroom: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers
  • Whitney Plantation history page: https://whitneyplantation.org/history/
  • USACE post-Katrina engineering documentation: https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Missions/HSDRRS/
  • Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America — John M. Barry (book)
  • Five Days at Memorial — Sheri Fink (book; mature)
  • New Orleans Jazz NHP: https://www.nps.gov/jazz/learn/historyculture/index.htm
  • 64 Parishes (Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, online encyclopedia): https://64parishes.org/
  • The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census — Philip D. Curtin (book; analytical, good for math angle)
  • Confederates in the Attic — Tony Horwitz (book; reportage on how the Civil War is remembered/misremembered in the South — useful for thinking about Whitney vs. romantic plantation tours)
  • Bienville's Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans — Richard Campanella (Tulane geographer; the definitive geographic-history of the city)
  • Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market — Walter Johnson (book; New Orleans was the largest slave market in the antebellum US — at one point ~100,000 enslaved people sold through the city)
  • Why New Orleans Matters — Tom Piazza (book; post-Katrina argument for the city's significance)
  • Treme (HBO, 2010–2013) — fictional but unusually well-researched series about post-Katrina NOLA; the music sequences in particular are documentary-grade
  • The PBS American Experience documentary on the great 1927 flood (companion to the John Barry book)
  • The National WWII Museum's Voices from the Front video archive: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/voicesfromthefront
  • New Orleans Public Library's NUTRIAS digital collections (historic photos and primary sources): https://nutrias.org/

Deeper research threads (any one of these could be a whole project at home)

Thread A: The hurricane engineering story. Start with the Living with Hurricanes exhibit at the Presbytère. Read the executive summary of the IPET (Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force) report — the federal post-mortem on the levee failures. Then read the Team Louisiana report — the state's counter-investigation, run by Ivor van Heerden, which argued more aggressively that foundation failure (not overtopping) was the dominant mechanism. Why do these two reports disagree on the engineering, and why does that disagreement still shape coastal policy 20+ years later?

Thread B: The Higgins / industrial mobilization story. Andrew Higgins built ~20,000 LCVPs in New Orleans during the war. Trace the supply chain: where did the marine plywood come from? Where did the engines come from? How did Higgins solve the problem of a vehicle that had to land troops on a shallow beach, withdraw under its own power, and survive surf? Eisenhower called him "the man who won the war for us." Was that true, or was it a press-friendly exaggeration? (Probably somewhere in between — but the LCVP genuinely changed amphibious doctrine.)

Thread C: The Whitney + Code Noir thread. Read the Code Noir of 1685 (French) in translation, then the Spanish coartación regulations (which allowed enslaved people to purchase their own freedom in installments — a route effectively closed under English/American law). How did the legal regime under which a person was enslaved change their actual lived possibility? Why does Louisiana still have a triple legal heritage (French civil law, Spanish customary law, American common law) visible in its modern Civil Code?

Thread D: The jazz/diaspora thread. Pick one of these musicians and trace their move out of New Orleans: Louis Armstrong (to Chicago in 1922), Sidney Bechet (to Paris), Jelly Roll Morton (to Chicago / LA / NYC / DC, eventually back), King Oliver (to Chicago — Armstrong followed him). What did they bring out, what got lost, what got transformed? Compare to the second wave (Mahalia Jackson, gospel; the Marsalis family, modern jazz revival).

Thread E: The Mississippi Delta engineering thread. Read the Old River Control Structure sections of Barry's Rising Tide and John McPhee's essay "Atchafalaya" from The Control of Nature. The Mississippi River is being held in its current course only by USACE engineering. What happens to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the entire Louisiana economy if/when the river jumps to the Atchafalaya basin? Why is this not a hypothetical?

Observable field goals

Goals Maxine can verify or document in the field at step 5 (confirm & document). Concrete things to look at, count, measure, identify, or photograph — not vague "learn about X."

  • At the WWII Museum, identify by sight and photograph: a Higgins boat (LCVP), a B-17 Flying Fortress, a P-51 Mustang, a Sherman tank, and a Norden bombsight. Confirm at least three details on each that you didn't know going in.
  • Follow the "dog tag" of a real WWII service member through the Museum entrance experience and write down their name, unit, theater, and outcome. Find their full record at https://www.ww2online.org/ when home.
  • At the Cabildo, locate and photograph the room where the Louisiana Purchase was signed (Sala Capitular). Note what is and isn't on display about how the purchase affected the indigenous peoples of the territory.
  • At the Presbytère's Living with Hurricanes exhibit, photograph the engineering diagrams of the levee failures. Identify in your own words: (a) which canal failure was overtopping and which was foundation failure, and (b) what the USACE has changed about how it builds floodwalls since.
  • At Whitney Plantation, locate three specific names on the Wall of Honor and write a paragraph each about what is documented about their lives. Photograph the Field of Angels sculpture and explain in writing what it is and why it was made.
  • In the French Quarter, identify and photograph one example of each of the four building types — Creole cottage, Creole townhouse, American townhouse, shotgun — and note the address of each.
  • Ride the St. Charles streetcar at least one full leg (Canal → Carrollton). Sketch or photograph one of the vintage Perley Thomas cars and note three things about its construction that newer light-rail cars don't have.
  • At Preservation Hall, identify the instruments in the band you see and write down the names of the musicians. Listen for at least one solo that "trades fours" (4-bar improvisations passed between musicians) and describe it.
  • Eat beignets at Café du Monde (any location). Calculate, by counting and measuring one serving, how much powdered sugar is on each beignet relative to its own weight.

Suggested itinerary

A 4-day base in New Orleans, plus 1 day drive in and 1 day drive out (6 days door-to-door). For a tighter 3-day trip, drop Day 4 (NOMA + Garden District + streetcars) and combine the lighter pieces into Day 2 or 3.

Day 0 (Friday): Drive Austin → New Orleans.

  • Leave SW Austin early — 6 AM if possible — to clear Houston before rush hour.
  • Lunch in Lake Charles or Lafayette (~6 hr in; Lafayette has serious Cajun food — try a boudin stop).
  • Arrive NOLA late afternoon. Check into hotel (Warehouse District ideal — walking distance to WWII Museum and a short walk/streetcar to French Quarter).
  • Easy first evening: dinner in the French Quarter (Acme Oyster, Coop's Place, or Cochon Butcher for casual). Walk Jackson Square at dusk. Café du Monde for beignets.

Day 1 (Saturday): National WWII Museum — full day.

  • 9:00 AM: arrive at museum at opening. Start with the Train Car entry experience + Louisiana Memorial Pavilion (Higgins boat, Arsenal of Democracy).
  • 10:30 AM: Beyond All Boundaries 4D film (pre-booked).
  • 11:30 AM: lunch at the museum's American Sector restaurant or Soda Shop (themed, decent, on-site so you don't lose 45 min walking out).
  • 12:30 PM: US Freedom Pavilion — Boeing Center (aircraft, tanks). Take the catwalks all the way up.
  • 2:00 PM: Campaigns of Courage — Road to Berlin. (~1.5 hr)
  • 3:30 PM: Road to Tokyo. (~1.5 hr)
  • 5:00 PM: walk over to the Liberation Pavilion (closes at 5; can finish in the morning of Day 2 if needed).
  • Dinner in Warehouse District (Cochon, Pêche Seafood Grill, or Mother's for old-school).
  • Optional evening: Preservation Hall 8:00 PM show (book "Big Shot" tickets in advance).

Day 2 (Sunday): French Quarter + Jackson Square museums.

  • 9:00 AM: walk French Quarter early before crowds. Stop at the NPS Jazz NHP visitor center (916 N Peters) for a free ranger talk.
  • 10:30 AM: The Cabildo (Louisiana Purchase room + Louisiana history).
  • 12:00 PM: lunch in the French Quarter (Napoleon House for a muffuletta and Pimm's Cup, or Café Amelie for nicer).
  • 1:30 PM: The Presbytère — both exhibits (Mardi Gras + Living with Hurricanes / Katrina). The Katrina exhibit is heavy — Maxine should pace.
  • 3:30 PM: St. Louis Cathedral interior (free, brief).
  • 4:00 PM: walk down to the French Market, Café du Monde for beignets (afternoon).
  • 5:30 PM: optional Frenchmen Street stroll (live music spilling out of every door; family-friendly early evening). Dinner at a Frenchmen St spot.
  • Optional: Preservation Hall 5:00 PM show if you skipped Day 1.

Day 3 (Monday): Whitney Plantation + lighter afternoon.

  • 9:00 AM: drive out to Whitney Plantation (~40 min west). Book guided tour for 10:00 AM.
  • 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM: Whitney tour + grounds + Wall of Honor + Field of Angels. Eat at the on-site café or pack lunch.
  • 1:30 PM: drive back into NOLA.
  • 2:30 PM: Audubon Aquarium + Insectarium (closes 5). Strong contrast to morning — gives Maxine cognitive recovery time.
  • 5:30 PM: dinner — try Brennan's for old-line Creole, or Compère Lapin for modern, or Willie Mae's for fried chicken (lunch only — go for lunch instead and swap order).
  • Evening: free / rest. (NOMA & Cabildo are closed Monday, which is why Whitney slots here.)

Day 4 (Tuesday): NOMA + City Park + Garden District + streetcars.

  • 9:30 AM: Canal Street streetcar from Canal & Carondelet out to the City Park / NOMA stop (~35 min). $1.25.
  • 10:30 AM: NOMA (~2 hrs) + Besthoff Sculpture Garden (~1 hr, free).
  • 12:30 PM: lunch in City Park (Café du Monde City Park location, or Morning Call) or Mid-City (Mandina's, Parkway Bakery for a po' boy).
  • 2:00 PM: streetcar back to Canal, transfer to the St. Charles line, ride out through the Garden District.
  • 2:45 PM: get off at Washington Ave, walk a Garden District loop (~1 hr — Prytania, First, Third Streets, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 from outside).
  • 4:30 PM: ride St. Charles back to Lee Circle / Canal.
  • 6:00 PM: Mardi Gras World tour (last tour 4:00 PM — move this to morning Day 4 or Day 3 if you want it).
    • Schedule note: Mardi Gras World last tour is 4 PM. If you want it, do it instead of NOMA on Day 4, or fit it into Day 3 afternoon by skipping Aquarium.
  • Farewell dinner: blowout spot — Commander's Palace (Garden District, reservations essential, jacket suggested but not required) or Brennan's, or Cochon.

Day 5 (Wednesday): Drive New Orleans → Austin.

  • Leave NOLA 7–8 AM to clear Baton Rouge before traffic.
  • Lunch in Lake Charles or Beaumont.
  • Home by evening (~8 hr).

Family roles:

  • Chris leads: WWII Museum day (history-spine of the trip), Whitney logistics + framing, levee/engineering questions, driving and parking, Cabildo navigation.
  • Heather leads: food / restaurant calls, French Quarter walk + architecture identification, NOMA and Besthoff Sculpture Garden (art lens), Garden District walk, pacing decisions ("we're cooked, let's stop").
  • Maxine drives: picks which Preservation Hall show to go to and reads up on the lineup. Picks 3–5 Whitney research subjects from the museum's online materials before the trip. Plans which specific aircraft she wants to see at the Boeing Center and prepares 2 questions per plane. Picks the Frenchmen Street venue for the optional evening walk based on what's playing.
  • Solo vs. both parents: This is a both-parents trip — too logistically complex (and emotionally heavy in places: Whitney, Katrina, Liberation Pavilion) for one parent alone with a kid. Heather + Maxine could break off for NOMA / sculpture garden on Day 4 morning while Chris handles a logistics chore (rental car return, repacking) if needed.

Connections

Combines well with:

  • Lafayette / Cajun country detour on the drive in or out (Vermilionville cultural park, Acadian Cultural Center, Avery Island / Tabasco factory). Adds 1 day.
  • Baton Rouge: USS Kidd (WWII Fletcher-class destroyer, museum ship) + Louisiana State Capitol. Could replace a NOLA day if WWII appetite is huge.
  • Houston cluster on the way home if not already done: NASA Johnson Space Center, Museum of Natural Science. (See nasa-jsc.md.)
  • Fredericksburg / National Museum of the Pacific War at home (Adventures/README.md) — directly comparable to NOLA's Pacific Theater exhibits. Pair before or after for a compare-the-museums angle.

Feeds into home projects / future adventures:

  • Big WWII project at home: oral-history interview with a family elder (or local veteran via local American Legion / VFW chapter) using interview techniques observed at the museum.
  • Hurricane / coastal engineering project: build a small physical model of a levee failure (sandbox + water + scale floodwall). Tie to TX coastal vulnerabilities (Galveston seawall, Houston Ship Channel — pairs with corpus-christi.md and padre-island.md).
  • Jazz history project: pick one NOLA musician (Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, Mahalia Jackson) and trace their move out of the city (to Chicago / NYC / Paris) — what does that diaspora look like?
  • Slavery / Reconstruction follow-up reading: pair the Whitney visit with reading on the Texas slave trade (Texas was a major destination for the interstate slave trade — Houston / Galveston). Visit the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston as a follow-up.

Open questions / still to research (Chris's side)

  • Confirm exact 2026 WWII Museum ticket prices before booking — verify whether they've raised since this doc was written. Decide between basic admission and any premium packages (some include the films pre-bundled at a discount).
  • Book WWII Museum + Beyond All Boundaries timed tickets ~2–4 weeks ahead.
  • Decide: guided vs. self-guided audio tour at Whitney. Guided is +$7/adult; the consensus is that guided is meaningfully better, but audio tour is fine and gives Maxine time to read every plaque.
  • Decide hotel: Warehouse District (closer to WWII Museum, easier parking) vs. French Quarter (more atmosphere, more expensive, harder parking). Lean Warehouse District for this trip given how many WWII Museum hours are planned.
  • Decide whether to do PT-305 boat ride on Lake Pontchartrain (limited spring/fall schedule; pricey; only-of-its-kind experience). Check museum schedule at booking time.
  • Lower 9th Ward tour: pick operator. lowernine.org donates back to the rebuilding effort and may be more grounded than commercial bus tours — but commercial may be more polished. Worth a phone call.
  • Check whether any Saints / Pelicans home games or special events overlap planned dates (massively affects hotel availability and prices).
  • Confirm whether Maxine wants to do an evening Frenchmen Street walk — some venues are 21+ after 9 PM; mid-afternoon and early evening are fine.
  • Pack list: dressy-casual outfit for one nicer dinner if doing Commander's Palace or Brennan's (no shorts, no flip-flops). Otherwise: full-casual NOLA.
  • Driving day: pre-load a NOLA history podcast for the 8-hour drive in — Tripod: New Orleans at 300 (WWNO) is excellent.