| | |  | Books | Home » » » Fodor's New Orleans 2012 (Full-color Travel Guide) | | | | | | | Description: | | Full-color guide
• Make your trip to New Orleans unforgettable with illustrated features, 25 maps, and 145 color photos.
Customize your trip with simple planning tools
• Top experiences & attractions
• Lodging comparison charts
• Easy-to-read color neighborhood maps
Explore the French Quarter, the Garden District, and beyond
• Discerning Fodor’s Choice picks for hotels, restaurants, sights, and more
• “Word of Mouth” tips from fellow Fodor’s travelers
• Illustrated features on Mardi Gras, Southern cuisine, and New Orleans music
• Best cocktails, jazz clubs, cemeteries, galleries, festivals, museums, souvenir shops, and activities for kids, penny pinchers, and local wannabes
Opinions from destination experts
• Fodor’s New Orleans-based writers reveal their favorite local haunts
• Revised annually to provide the latest information
Added bonus: At the end of each Fodor’s hotel review, we’ve included snippets from TripAdvisor reviews. Plan your trip with the extra peace of mind that comes from knowing each of Fodor’s expert selections is reinforced by consumer experience and feedback. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Fodor's | | Paperback:
| 344 pages | | Publisher:
| Fodor's | | Publication Date:
| November 29, 2011 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0679009353 | | Product Length:
| 5.21 inches | | Product Width:
| 0.65 inches | | Product Height:
| 7.99 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.9 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.9 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 43 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 43 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
Decent Book But Here's Some Practical AdviceJan 04, 2012
By Trevor Lowing
"Trevor"
I just got back from a two week vacation in New Orleans and I used this book for planning the trip. We stayed in Marigny at a really nice condo. The positive thing I have to say is that it is a good, general source for information. Unfortunately it doesn't help that much when you try to plan specific activities. Most importantly, there are so many variables once you get to town that following a rigid itinerary is about impossible. There are too many variables such as weekday, time of day, weather, crowds, etc that make it difficult to keep to a plan. Here's my advice:
1) Book your hotel early or use AirBNB.com. There is a really nice but pricey RV park too fqrv.com (some people were parking in a nearby parking lot too).
2) Create a list of activities and check them off the list as you are there. Organize activities by the time of day for each.
3) Use the Streetcar ($3/day Jazzy pass) or a Taxi to travel around. The French Quarter and Marigny are walkable.
4) Use Yelp.com or Urbanspoom to pick inexpensive but well reviewed restaurants. Beware that any restaurant with gambling machines will not allow folks under 21 so call ahead. If you have a group bigger then two people be prepared to wait for seating. Many restaurants and pubs are small and have limited seating.
Our favorite activities:
New Orleans School of Cooking
Rock n Bowl for live music and bowling
Streetcar to the Garden District
Frenchman Street live music and food
Free ferry to Algiers Point from Canal St. Walk the levee and have breakfast at Tout de Suite Cafe.
Bourbon St on New Years to watch the chaos.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Good Guide to a City Coming Back into its GloryDec 11, 2011
By TammyJo Eckhart
"TammyJo Eckhart"
When Katrina struck it devastated New Orleans and much of the coast and this guidebook does not shy away from this fact or the reality that rebuilding is still happening. Yet it covers these realities with an objective viewpoint focused on what the potential visitor may want to know and should know when planning a visit to or visiting the city and the areas around it. This level of honesty is continued throughout the guide whether the chapter looks at a particular neighbor hood or is suggesting hotels and restaurants.
There are 12 chapters and then the Fodor's "Travel Smart" along with the index and information about the authors. 26 maps and amazing photos help put the text into image so that you can get a general feel for the city before you go. The text also assumes the reader knows very little so we get history, current events, and explanations of terms which are unique to the city or the region that non-natives need to understand, this includes other Americans and visitors from around the globe.
Something, however, was oddly missing from this guidebook: Itineraries. In all of the Fodor's guidebooks I've reviewed for Amazon thus far, there are always suggested itineraries the visitor could take. These might be city or region specific and they generally range from 1 day at a time to two weeks. Why not have such suggestions for New Orleans and the surrounding areas?
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Decent guidebook; not the best for first-timersNov 28, 2011
By Tara Walker Gross
"Avid Reader"
This Fodor's New Orleans guide does have some great perks - namely the full color pictures and the excerpts from TripAdvisor - but unfortunately it lacks in other areas. The restaurant suggestions are sadly lacking, made up with mainly pricey establishments and completely ignoring great affordable options such as Napoleon House and Angeli. And while the nightlife section is decent, I'm wondering what their reasoning is behind giving the "New Orleans Original Cocktail Tour" a mention (as in, whether anyone from Fodor's actually went on the tour).
In general I prefer the Frommer's take on New Orleans because they actually send one person down there to explore and then write the guidebook, which leads to a much more personalized style of writing and a focus on specific, tasteful suggestions. One can always do his or her own searches on TripAdvisor to see what the masses have to say; I read guidebooks to get the views and info from professionals.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Detailed Travel GuideDec 31, 2011
By Blink
I moved close to New Orleans over a year ago and have been a few times. It's a great city and very unique. I really like Fodor's travel guides because they are always very detailed, and the format is very "easy" to read and great for skimmers. I like that hotels, restaurants, and other attractions are listed separately in their own sections and that the prices for everything are labelled. The helpful tips throughout the book are useful as well. In the New Orleans travel guide, they covered all the big attractions, so you won't miss out on anything. After reading it, I learned of more things to do and see that I haven't done yet. It's a helpful guide for people that have never been and for people, like me, who have already been a few times and want to go back.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
After you've toured San Francisco and New York City, perhaps New Orleans should be next on your listDec 07, 2011
By Tom Brody
NEW ORLEANS 2012 by Clark, Dodge, Fenterstock, LaBorde, Odell, Parker, Peyton, and Price, is a 338 page guidebook with a color photo or color map on essentially every other page. The book has 12 chapters, including, THE FRENCH QUARTER (Chapter 2), FAUBOURG MARIGNY, BYWATER, and TREME (Ch.3), CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT and WAREHOUSE DISTRICT (Ch.4), GARDEN DISTRICT (Ch.5), UPTOWN and BARROLLTON-RIVERBEND (Ch.6), MID-CITY and BAYOU St.JOHN (Ch.7), WHERE TO EAT (Ch.8), and so on. The first map (pages 10-11) shows the seven districts that are featured in the chapter titles. These districts are located in the crescent-shaped area of New Orleans, also known as The Crescent City. Half of page 13 warns of the high crime rate in New Orleans (everywhere in New Orleans, not just in bad sections of town). Page 23 informs us of the Voodoo Museum, where you can see voodoo dolls and gris-gris. I visited this same Voodoo Museum back in 1980, during the course of a science meeting (FASEB meeting), where I presented my research on folate polyglutamates. I bought a little souvenir at the museum. It was a small jar of swamp water. The jar had a scary-looking label. Pages 33-38 of NEW ORLEANS 2012 details the destruction and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This includes a large color map showing an hour-by-hour timeline of the destruction of various districts in New Orleans.
The FRENCH QUARTER is detailed on pages 39-68. We see photos of old buildings. A map shows locations of, e.g., LaBranche House, Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, Latrobe House, Faulkner House, Mardi Gras Museum, and so on. The historic houses were built mainly in the late 1700s to 1860s. We learn that some of these are open to the public, some were converted to working taverns (e.g., Lafitte's), and some are not open to the publicv (e.g., Quadroon Ballroom and Latrobe House). Pages 50-58 detail the Mardi Gras, which includes the ZULU PARADE and the REX PARADE. We see extraordinarily colored photographs of adults garbed in feathers, masks, and makeup.
The next chapter, "FAUOURG MARIGNY, BYWATER and TREME" (pages 69-84) concerns an area just east of the French Quarter. This area contains many cafes, jazz clubs, and historic architecture, e.g., a glass-sculpture gallery (Mercury Studio) on Louisa Street, and the Jelly Roll Morton House on Frenchman Street.
Moving on to the chapter, "WHERE TO EAT" (pages 133-176), we learn that the main influences on cuisine include French, African, Spanish, and Caribbean. The fanciest restaurants are disclosed in a list as Antoine's, Broussard's, and Stella. (I dined at Antoine's during the science meeting in 1980, mentioned above, and had their famed puffed potatos.) The Cajun restaurants listed are Bon Ton Cafe, Cochon, and K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen. The listed Creole restaurants are Arnaud's Bistro at Maison de Ville, Brigtsen's, Commander's Palace, Emeril's, and Galatoires.
To disgress slightly, it is my opinion, but an opinion likely shared by others, that the cuisine in New Orleans is one of the main reasons to visit New Orleans. This is in contrast to most or all other tourist-attracting cities in the United States, where the main attractions would be structures such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Empire State Building in New York City, or a renowned dance company, opera, or symphony orchestra.
Diving back into NEW ORLEANS 2012, we read that Bayona on Dauphine Street serves pumpkin soup with coconut (Caribbean food), smoked duck, and maple-seminola cake (page 146). We learn that Gumbo Shop on Saint Peter Street serves jambalaya, shrimp Creole, remoulade, bread pudding, and sausage gumbo (page 149). We learn that GW Fins on Bienville Street serves scallops, lobster dumplings, and deep dish apple pie (page 149). As one can see, tourists who have some sort of hangup about seafood are not likely to be capable of maximally enjoying their stay in New Orleans. However, one can also see that tourists who do NOT LIKE OYSTERS will have plenty of other selections from New Orleans' famed cuisine!
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