Three Days With the Kids

Description:

This French-market coffee stand, established in 1862, offers a menu of dark coffee and chicory, beignets, white or chocolate milk and freshly-squeezed orange juice. The cafe is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day (except Christmas Day) and is one of the most popular places in New Orleans for singles, couples and families. You may have to wait for a table during the busiest morning hours. While the coffee is certainly good, most people come for the famous, fresh-from-the-fryer beignets. They are brought to your table in such a hurry that they are still hot when you take that first melt-in-your-mouth bite.

Description:

Made up of just under 20 acres of newly repaired green space, Woldenberg Riverfront Park has historically been the city's promenade; now it's an oasis of greenery in the heart of the city with numerous works by popular local artists scattered throughout. The park includes a large lawn with a brick promenade leading to the Mississippi, and it's home to hundreds of trees -- oaks, magnolias, willows, and crape myrtles -- and thousands of shrubs. That greenery got beat up, but nothing like a rainy tropical climate to help foliage thrive again.

The Moonwalk is a paved pedestrian thoroughfare along the river, a wonderful walk on a pretty New Orleans day but really a must-do for any weather other than pouring rain. It has steps that allow you to get right down to Old Muddy -- on foggy nights, you feel as if you are floating above the water. There are many benches from which to view the city's main industry: its busy port (second in the world only to Amsterdam in annual tonnage). To your right you'll see the Greater New Orleans Bridge and the World Trade Center of New Orleans (formerly the International Trade Mart) skyscraper as well as the Toulouse Street wharf, the departure point for excursion steamboats. This is also an excellent spot to watch full moons rise over the river.

Description:

The world-class Audubon Institute's Aquarium of the Americas was one of the saddest of so many terrible Katrina stories. The facility had superb hurricane contingency plans, not to mention engineering that one only wishes was shared by the levee system, and consequently both building and fishy residents came through the initial storm beautifully. But as the days following the evacuation stretched out, and the staff was forced to leave so that government relief efforts could use the building as a staging area, generators failed, and most of its 10,000 fish died, breaking the hearts of not only the staff who worked so hard to keep their charges healthy and alive, but of just about anyone who had ever visited this lovely place. Survivors included the popular otter pair, the penguins, the leafy and weedy sea dragons, and Midas, the 250-pound sea turtle. The facility's reopening in May 2006 was a cause for rejoicing, not least because those penguins, who memorably were marched out of the aquarium during the post-storm days to take a flight to Oakland for a temporary stay, were flown home from their vacation via a specially designated FedEx flight, marching down the ramp and into the building just like they were auditioning for a certain penguin-specific movie!

As it gets back up to speed, this will once again be a world-class aquarium, highly entertaining and painlessly educational, with beautifully constructed exhibits. Kids love it, even those too impatient to read the graphics, but adults shouldn't overlook it, if for no other reason than it's a handy refuge from the rain.

The aquarium is on the banks of the Mississippi River, a very easy walk from the main Quarter action. Five major exhibit areas and dozens of smaller aquariums hold a veritable ocean of aquatic life native to the region (especially the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico) and to North, Central, and South Americas. You can walk through the underwater tunnel in the Caribbean Reef exhibit and wave to finny friends swimming all around you, view a shark-filled re-creation of the Gulf of Mexico, or drop in to see the penguin exhibit. We particularly like the walk-through Waters of the Americas, where you wander in rainforests (complete with birds and piranhas) and see what goes on below the surface of swamps; one look will quash any thoughts of a dip in a bayou. Not to be missed are a fine exhibit on frogs, the impossibly cute giant sea otters, and the ongoing drama of the sea horse exhibit. There is also an excellent new interactive play zone for kids. The long-anticipated Insectarium (yep, a museum dedicated to the over 900,000 species of things that creep, crawl, and flutter) sustained a lot of damage, but it should be open sometime in 2008. We can't wait for the termite room, the cooking demonstrations that will insist cookies made with crunchy invertebrates are worth eating, and, of course, the room about New Orleans bugs, including those ginormous thingies the locals insist on calling palmetto bugs, but we know perfectly well are just fancy roaches. The Insectarium will be in the former U.S. Customs House, at 423 Canal St. The IMAX theater shows two or three films at regular intervals. Look for an astonishing Katrina documentary, showing the flooding and the rest of the devastation. The Audubon Institute also runs the city's zoo at Audubon Park uptown. Combination tickets for the aquarium, the IMAX theater, and the zoo via air-conditioned shuttle to the zoo are $31 for adults, $22 for seniors, $21 for children. Zoo and Aquarium combo tickets including shuttle ride are $25 for adults, $14 for children, $9 for seniors. You can also buy tickets for different combinations of the attractions. Round-trip from aquarium to zoo on the steamship John James Audubon with admission to both is $41 for adults and $23 for children.

Description:

The Entergy IMAX features the wonders of nature captured in three stories of vivid, in your face, color. These movies, usually an hour long, complement the nature themes introduced by the Aquarium and other Audubon facilities. This IMAX is an entertaining and educational window into the natural world.

Description:

This popular two-story interactive museum is really a playground in disguise that will keep kids occupied for a good couple of hours. Along with changing exhibits, the museum offers an art shop with regularly scheduled projects, a mini-grocery store, a chance to be a "star anchor" at a simulated television studio, and lots of activities exploring music, fitness, water, and life itself. If you belong to your local science museum, check your membership card for reciprocal entry privileges. Children 15 and under must be accompanied by parent.

Description:

Audubon Insectarium showcases the largest group of animals on the planet, insects!  Since prehistoric times, insects have played invaluable roles: pollinating crops, decomposing waste and adding intrigue, color, texture and majesty to our world. Your visit to the one-of-a-kind, interactive Audubon Insectarium will illuminate amazing things about these tiny (and not so tiny!) creatures; you'll never think about them the same way again.

Description:

This tour takes passengers aboard the Sternwheeler on a tour of the Audubon Zoo and the Aquarium of the Americas. Four daily trips depart from the Riverwalk (in front of the Aquarium) at 10a, noon, 2p and 4p. Return trips leave from the zoo at 11a, 1p, 3p and 5p. Tickets can be purchased for one-way. Or round trip tickets can be purchased with or without aquarium and zoo admission. Combination tickets will save you the most money.

Description:

From the critter-filled swamps of Louisiana to the grasslands of Africa, you can explore some of the Earth's most intriguing habitats and the creatures that dwell within them at this world-class zoo. Rated one of the top zoos in the United States, it features two rare white tigers, as well as Komodo dragons. One of the newest exhibits, Jaguar Jungle, focuses on the people and animals of Central America, including the mysterious Mayan culture.

Our Local Expert Says:

Audubon Park is alive with nature – ducks, geese, egrets, and squirrels. And if you walk from Audubon Park to Riverview Park on the side of the stables, you will be able to see the giraffes inside Audubon Zoo!

Description:

Audubon Park is really several parks in one, spanning St. Charles Avenue all the way to the Mississippi River. A fitness trail circles the Audubon Golf Course and runs alongside live oak trees and lush lagoons that are home to ducks, geese, egrets, and turtles. Cross over Magazine Street, and you'll come to the Audubon Zoo and Cascade Stables. Keep walking alongside the zoo, past the Audubon Labyrinth and across the train tracks, until you get to Riverview Park. Known to locals as "the fly," this is a great spot for playing soccer, or just laying in the sun with a daiquiri, admiring the waters of the Mississippi. The park is a great place to play or picnic, and if you don't want to drive there, you can get to the park from the French Quarter on the St. Charles Streetcar or by the John James Audubon ferry boat.