Walking New Orleans City Park from NOMA to the bayou

The museum end of the park

New Orleans Museum of Art is the city's oldest fine-arts museum and the anchor of City Park. The galleries open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Wednesday runs 12 to 7 p.m. Mondays are closed, which shapes the whole day if you arrive at the start of the week.

Adult admission is $23 for out-of-state visitors. Seniors pay $18 and students $16. Under-20s go free, and Louisiana residents are free on Wednesdays. You book guided and self-guided group visits in advance through NOMA's group visits desk, where school and tour-coach parties are routine.

Behind the museum, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden takes walk-in visitors with no ticket and no booking. It doubled in size in 2019, and its 11.5 acres run under ancient live oaks and magnolias, with lagoons crossed by small arched footbridges and a glass-walled pavilion among the trees. More than 90 modern sculptures line those paths. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily from April to September, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from October to March. It is the one thing in the park that costs nothing and still takes an hour.

Café NOMA occupies the museum's marble lobby wing, glass-walled, with sightlines straight out to the sculpture garden oaks. Ralph Brennan runs the kitchen, and flatbreads, market bowls and a proper cocktail list come out on pale tables. Its own side entrance means you can eat here without paying museum admission. It opens Tuesday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Prices are $$, and Mondays are closed.

The Botanical Garden and the Casino Building

The New Orleans Botanical Garden dates from 1936, a WPA project of Art Deco stonework and formal parterre beds. More than 2,000 plant varieties grow in it, along with 15 Enrique Alférez sculptures, pale stone nudes among the roses. A steep glasshouse Conservatory holds a tropical rainforest. The Historic Train Garden runs at weekends, miniature streetcars on 1,300 feet of track. The Japanese Garden is closed for renovation.

Entry is $27 for a non-resident adult and $17 for a Louisiana resident. Children aged three to 12 pay $8, and residents are free on Wednesdays. Parties of 10 or more should pre-book, and the garden rents out the Pavilion of the Two Sisters inside the grounds for private events.

Café du Monde City Park has filled the restored 1913 Casino Building since 2019, a Mission Revival block with curved parapets and an arcaded porch, between a lagoon and the Botanical Garden. Beignets come under powdered sugar on paper plates at outdoor tables under the oaks. You order at the counter, and the indoor and terrace seating is wide enough that nothing needs booking. Doors open at 7 a.m. daily and close between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. Prices are $. This branch replaced Morning Call, which left the park and now trades on Canal Blvd.

Carousel Gardens and Storyland

Carousel Gardens Amusement Park & Storyland turns on a hand-carved wooden carousel of 1906, the Flying Horses, inside a green-and-cream pavilion with stained-glass clerestory windows. It is one of only a handful of antique wooden carousels still spinning in the United States, and a National Historic Landmark. Next door, Storyland sets out 18 oversized storybook sculptures, Captain Hook's pirate ship and the open mouth of Pinocchio's whale among them. Admission is $$ and covers Storyland. Opening is seasonal and weighted to weekends. Check the current operating calendar before you build a day around it.

The children's museum on Little Lake

The Louisiana Children's Museum moved into the park in 2019, low white pavilions with deep shaded porches on a lagoon edge in the oaks. A boardwalk and a floating classroom run out over the water. Inside, children work a water-flow table built as a model Mississippi. Travel + Leisure named it among the best children's museums in the United States. The site runs to 8.5 acres indoors and out, and admission is $$. Field trips and group bookings are standard here.

Acorn is a Dickie Brennan kitchen hidden inside the children's museum, doing grown-up versions of familiar dishes. The wide covered terrace hangs over the Little Lake lagoon with sweeping live oaks reflected in the water, and there are high chairs between the tables. It is the best lunch in the middle of the park, and the easiest to sit down at with children. Hours are Wednesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and prices are $$.

Boats and bikes on Big Lake

Wheel Fun Rentals keeps its dock on Big Lake, white fibreglass swan pedal boats lined up on the shore and four-wheel surrey cycles with striped canopies behind them. Pedal a swan around the lake, or take the lagoon loop on wheels. After dark the swans go out LED-lit on black water, and those night rides are the reason to come back. You rent on the day, and only peak weekends need booking ahead. Prices are $$. The Singing Oak, hung with wind chimes, is two minutes' walk from the dock.

Couturie Forest and Popp Fountain

Couturie Forest & Scout Island covers 60 acres of bald cypress and native hardwood, free and unticketed, with eight distinct ecosystems inside it. Soft dirt trails run between stretches of still black water, and the park's best birding is here. A short scramble takes you up Laborde Mountain, a man-made 43-foot rip-rap hump and the highest point in New Orleans. Come between October and March, when the humidity drops, and bring repellent. Trails are single file in places and turn muddy after rain.

Popp Fountain was the park's great set piece of 1937, a ring of tall Corinthian columns around a 60-foot circular basin, with a cast-bronze knot of leaping dolphins at the centre throwing a 30-foot spray. Enrique Alférez made the fountainhead. It is alone in a clearing of oaks and costs nothing to see. Open days are limited, and the grounds and the adjoining Arbor Room are frequently closed for private hire, so confirm access before you walk out there. The 1907 Peristyle colonnade by the lagoon is 10 minutes away and always open.

The Bayou St. John edge

Pitot House faces the still water of Bayou St. John on the park's bayou edge, five minutes from the Esplanade gate. The 1799 house is West Indies-style Creole colonial, pale stucco over brick-between-post walls under a double-pitched hipped roof, with wraparound galleries on columns. It was home to the city's first elected mayor, and it is the oldest surviving Creole colonial country house on the bayou. Entry is by guided tour only, Wednesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the last tour at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for an adult and $12 for students and seniors. Call in advance; same-day entry depends on availability.

Cafe Degas has traded on Esplanade Avenue since 1980 and is the city's longest-running French bistro, a few minutes from the park's Bayou St. John corner. The room is a glazed-in wooden deck built around a living pecan tree that grows up through the floor and out through the roof, with fairy lights above zinc bistro tables. Prices are $$$. The room is small, and a group reservation needs booking well ahead; a walk-in for two often works midweek. The same owners run Le Ponce bakery next door for croissants on the way in.

Parkway Bakery & Tavern has been family-run since 1911, a corner bakery with a neon sign and painted brick about 10 minutes' walk from the park's bayou edge. Roast-beef po'boys come wrapped in butcher paper, and the dripping roast beef is the order. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Picnic tables sit out back, a block off Bayou St. John, and the patio takes dogs. You order at the counter. It closes Mondays and Tuesdays, shuts at 6 p.m., and prices are $.

Dinner and a bed on City Park Avenue

Ralph's on the Park is at 900 City Park Ave, directly opposite the Esplanade entrance, a 19th-century building in soft green with full-length second-floor windows and a balcony looking across the avenue into the oaks. White-clothed tables fill the room, and private dining rooms sit upstairs. The Brennan family runs it, prices are $$$, and reservations are strongly advised at weekends and for brunch. It works as the dinner or Sunday brunch bookend to a day inside the gates.

Oakview Bed and Breakfast is across the street from the NOMA entrance at 1172 City Park Ave, a historic Victorian painted violet and Mardi Gras purple with gingerbread trim, facing the park's oaks. It is the closest proper stay to the park, and it suits couples. The house suspended breakfast service in late 2025, so it is room-only now, with 24-hour coffee. Rates are $$, and the house takes no children and no pets. Reception keeps office hours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Arrange your arrival in advance. The fallback is Esplanade Avenue's bed and breakfasts, La Belle Esplanade and HH Whitney House, about 1.5 miles down the ridge from the park gate.

Before you go

Mondays close NOMA and Café NOMA, Parkway closes Mondays and Tuesdays, Acorn runs Wednesday to Sunday, and Pitot House tours only Wednesday to Friday. Pre-book the Botanical Garden for 10 or more, reserve Cafe Degas and a weekend table at Ralph's, check the Carousel Gardens operating calendar, and confirm Popp Fountain is open.

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