Imagine standing right in the heart of the French
Quarter, like you're holding a giant, sweating
plastic cup. Oh, it's definitely a hurricane.
Or a hand grenade. Right, a massive, sugary hurricane.
And jazz is just blaring from some street corner.
There's a bachelorette party screaming to your
left, and you are entirely, hopelessly lost in
all the sensory chaos. Which is pretty much the
universal first -time experience there. Totally.
I mean, you came to this city to find it. soul,
right, to see the history. But suddenly all you
can see is just this neon blur. It's overwhelming.
It really is. So welcome to today's Deep Dive
on the Travel podcast by Excursion Pass. You
know we love acting as your personal on the ground
scouts. Our whole mission here is to anticipate
your doubts, get ahead of all those objections
you might have, and really bring you the immersive
details with a healthy dose of reality. Exactly.
We want to put you right there on the pavement
alongside us, sharing every little detail. Yeah,
we want it to feel like you're literally walking
the tour with us right now. Because we want you
to be able to decide if an experience is actually
worth your time and hard -earned money before
you ever even pack your bags. We like to think
of ourselves as that, you know, expert couple
who has lived it and can joke around about the
messy parts. Because there are always messy parts.
And that overwhelming sensory chaos you just
described? That is exactly the problem we are
tackling today. We're looking at this 105 minute
walking tour called Quarter Notes, French Quarter
Favorites. Quarter Notes, I like that name. Right.
And it's also listed sometimes as French Quarter
Favorites, New Orleans landmarks walking tour.
It's run by a group called The Real New Orleans.
And our sources from both Excursion Pass and
Trip Advisor suggest this tour is designed to
be like the ultimate anchor. An anchor to keep
you from drowning in all that Bourbon Street
chaos. Precisely. It claims to be the definitive
shortcut to actually understanding the neighborhood
rather than just, you know, surviving it. Which
honestly sounds like a pretty bold claim for
a walk that's under two hours. Yeah. But before
we pull out the physical map and trace the route,
we have to talk about the manifesto this tour
company operates under because it completely
changes the lens of the whole experience. Oh,
the manifesto is fascinating. It really is the
real New Orleans describes their philosophy as
simple but radical. They say they build their
tours for wanderers who seek connection over
consumption. Connection over consumption. Yeah.
They want you to experience a place that is,
quote, magnificent, messy, mystical, and sometimes
maddening. And they want you to do that by tapping
into deep listening and the power of presence.
Now, OK, let's unpack this, because I have to
throw a flag on the play right here. I had a
feeling you would highlight that exact phrasing.
I mean, listen. When I finally get time off work
and I drop money on a flight to New Orleans,
I am absolutely looking to consume. Bring on
the food. Right. I want a massive bowl of jambalaya.
I want the sugary beignets covered in powdered
sugar. I want the loud music. When a tour company
starts talking about the power of presence, it
sounds suspiciously like a mindfulness retreat
masquerading as a history walk. Like you're going
to be doing yoga in Jackson Square. Exactly.
Is this going to be like too serious for a vacation?
It feels a bit like being told to sit and quietly
savor a single unseasoned grain of rice when
you were starving for an absolute feast. That
reaction makes total sense. I get it. But what's
fascinating here is if we look at the psychology
of how cities like this operate, that philosophy
is actually a survival tactic. A survival tactic?
How so? Well, in a heavily touristed zone like
the French Quarter, mindless consumption is just
the default gravity. The entire infrastructure
is designed to pull you from souvenir shop to
bar to photo op over and over. Yeah, that is
incredibly true. Just sort of float along with
the crowd. Right, but because the quarter is
infamous for that extreme sensory overload, I
mean, think about the clashing smells of sweet
olive and stale beer, the brutal humidity, the
crowds. If you don't intentionally ground yourself,
the city just happens to you in a total blur.
Oh, wow. Yeah, you end up treating a 300 year
old neighborhood like it's a theme park. Like
you're taking a selfie in front of a gorgeous
balcony without having any idea what you're actually
looking at. Precisely. The tour creators are
targeting that exact blur. They are using this
connection over consumption model as a grounding
mechanism. They want to hit the pause button
for you. So they're forcing you to stop and just
breathe for a second. Yeah. By asking you to
look closely at the physical space and understand
its historical weight, they are essentially calibrating
your instrument before you start playing the
music. You can still go get that giant hurricane
afterward, but now you'll actually know what
city you're drinking it in. Okay, I love that
analogy. It's not a meditation retreat, it's
a life raft. It's calibrating the instrument.
So, because this tour asks you to look so closely
at the physical pavement, it changes how they
navigate the space. The source material says
this tour aims to give you a readable structure.
Right. Acting as a framework for first -time
visitors. Yeah. So, how do they physically map
that out? Where do we start? Well, they start
right on the fault line of the city's history.
The route kicks off at 702 Decatur Street. OK.
702 Decatur. Paint the picture for us. So this
is right on the amphitheater steps leading up
to Washington Artillery Park. You are sitting
directly between Café du Monde and Landry's,
and you're right across the street from Jackson
Square. Wow, okay. So you are immediately sandwiched
between two massive defining forces. On one side,
you have the Mississippi River, which is, you
know, the entire economic reason the city even
exists in the first place. The lifeblood of the
city. Right. And then on the other side, you
have the heart of a colonial city just staring
right back at you. And from that exact vantage
point, the guides start walking you through the
absolute essentials of Jackson Square. The sources
list stops like St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo,
the Presbyter and the Pontelba buildings. OK,
let's unpack those landmarks for a second, because
if you've never been to New Orleans, those are
just proper nouns that sound vaguely French.
Very true. Like the Cabildo isn't just a pretty
Spanish colonial facade is the actual room where
the Louisiana Purchase was signed in 1803, which
is Wild to think about. Right, it's the building
where the size of the United States literally
doubled overnight. And then those Pantalbo buildings
flanking the square. They are essentially the
oldest continuously occupied apartment complexes
in the entire country. Which perfectly illustrates
that concept of layers that the tour focuses
on so heavily. Ah, right, the layers. Yeah, because
when most visitors walk through the French Quarter,
they naturally assume they are looking at French
architecture. I mean, it's in the name. But the
tour explicitly breaks down how the Spanish colonial
influence, the French colonial roots, and the
American river trade all sit right on top of
each other. And that brings up one of my absolute
favorite historical details that I really hope
they cover on this route. Yeah. The French Quarter
is mostly Spanish architecture. It's the ultimate
irony. It totally is. And the reason why is entirely
catastrophic. So in the late 1700s, there were
two massive fires, one in 1788 and another in
1794. And the original French colonial city,
which was mostly built out of wood, basically
burned to the ground. It was completely decimated.
And the Spanish were in control of the city at
that time, right? So they were the ones who had
to rebuild it. They looked at the ashes and essentially
instituted strict new building codes, no more
exposed wood anywhere. Makes sense after two
massive fires. Exactly. Everything had to be
brick and it had to be covered in stucco to protect
from the dampness. And they mandated slate or
tile roofs to prevent flying embers from catching
during the next fire. So when people are walking
around today admiring the quaint historic vibe
of the French Quarter, they're actually admiring
an 18th century disaster response plan. That's
exactly what it is. The whole aesthetic is just
a byproduct of panic and fire prevention. I mean,
that is the kind of context that makes a walking
tour so valuable. It's like reading the table
of contents before diving into a massive, complicated
novel. That's a great way to put it. Because
if you just jump to chapter 20 of a sprawling
epic, you're going to be totally lost. You need
the geographic and historical bearings first.
And that table of contents metaphor is vital
here, because once you understand the grand public
layers around Jackson Square, the tour intentionally
shifts its focus. It moves away from the wide
open civic spaces and takes you down Royal Street,
weaving toward places like the old Ursuline convent.
OK, so it gets a bit more intimate. Exactly.
The narrative piddits from the public empire
to the intimate private lives of the actual people
who live there. Now the shift into the private
intimate spaces brings up a massive detail that
is kind of buried in the fine print of the sources.
And it's something any prospective traveler needs
to know before they drop. 48 bucks on a ticket.
Oh, the exterior starts. Yes. The sources explicitly
state this is a city history experience with
exterior stops and storytelling. There are no
guaranteed interior admissions. So I have to
ask, if we aren't going inside these gorgeous
historic homes or convents, are we just paying
to stand on the sidewalk and stair brick walls
for an hour and 45 minutes? It sounds totally
counterintuitive, I know. But if we connect this
to the bigger picture, the exterior actually
is the core curriculum of this tour. Wait, really?
The outside is the point? Yes. The narrative
specifically focuses on how private interiors
in New Orleans intentionally hide behind public
facades. The architecture itself was designed
as a defense mechanism, and not just against
fire, but against the harsh environment and the
public gaze. OK, unpack the mechanism there.
How is a brick wall acting as a defense against
the environment? Well, think about those Spanish
building codes we just discussed. They built
these fortress -like outer walls that push right
up to the very edge of the sidewalk. Right, there's
no front lawn. Exactly. But behind those imposing
walls, they built these lush shaded open air
courtyards. And in an era way before air conditioning,
when they were dealing with brutal swampy heat
and rampant diseases like yellow fever, those
courtyards were basically an ancient HVAC system.
Oh, wow. I never thought of it like that. Yeah.
The dense outer walls blocked the sun and the
chaos of the street. Meanwhile, the inner courtyard
acted as the lungs of the property, pulling cool
air up and drawing it through the living spaces.
So the fact that you can't see inside isn't a
limitation of the tour. It is the literal subject
matter. Exactly. The wall was built to keep you
out. So you are standing exactly where the history
happened. On the street, looking at the boundaries
people built to protect themselves from the climate
and honestly, from each other. The street becomes
the canvas for the story, and that ties directly
into the literary history the tour weaves into.
The sources highlight that the guides discuss
literary giants like Tennessee Williams and William
Faulkner, who both lived in the quarter. Oh,
Faulkner. He famously wrote his first novel while
living in a ground floor apartment hidden away
in Pirate's Alley. which is just off Jackson
Square. And that is the connection right there.
These writers were observers. They lived in those
shielded private spaces, the courtyards, the
hidden balconies, and they just watched the magnificent,
maddening public life of New Orleans parade past
their closed gates. It's all about that boundary.
Right. The tension between the heavily guarded
private reality and the chaotic public face of
the city is what fueled so much of their art.
So by standing on the exterior, looking at facades,
the tour puts you in the exact same observational
mindset as those famous authors. Man, that completely
flips my perspective on an exterior -only experience.
It's not a ripoff. It's giving you the tools
to notice the intentional secrecy of the city.
But that brings us to a major logistical hurdle.
If this tour is so thoughtful, so focused on
ancient HVAC systems and literary ghosts, how
on earth does it survive in a wild predatory
ecosystem of New Orleans tourism? Because the
competition down there is notoriously fierce.
Fierce doesn't even cover it. Here's where it
gets really interesting. Looking at the TripAdvisor
source under their similar experiences in top
rated sections, it is an absolute circus. Oh,
I can only imagine. To compete for your time
and money. Quarter Notes is up against an adults
only true crime and ghost walking tour. There's
a premier ghost voodoo and vampire walking tour.
Of course there is. You can go on a swamp zipline
adventure, take a high -speed airboat ride, or
sign up for a literal voodoo doll making class.
A voodoo doll making class? Yes. So when a tourist
arrives with limited time, How does a 105 -minute
architectural stroll compete with a swamp zip
line or, you know, hunting vampires? It's a great
question, and it survives by recognizing that
it serves a completely different function in
a traveler's diet. The source material doesn't
try to compete with the spectacle. It explicitly
positions quarter notes as the optimal first
New Orleans tour. It is the foundation you build
the rest of your trip upon. That makes a lot
of sense, because taking one of those vampire
tours before you understand the colonial history
of New Orleans. It's like watching a horror movie
with the sound completely muted. Oh, that's a
brilliant way to phrase it Right like you see
the jump scares you see the blood, but you don't
feel the tension building up You have no idea
why the monster is actually scary The haunted
pub crawls and the true crime walks are fantastic.
Don't get me wrong. But they are the dessert
of the New Orleans experience. And if you only
eat dessert, you end up with a sugar crash and
no real substance. You need the protein first.
Exactly. Yeah. The literary references, the Spanish
fire codes, the deep influence of the Mississippi
River trade that brought enslaved people, pirates,
and aristocrats all to the exact same muddy banks.
That history is the soil the spooky stuff grows
in. Wow. Yeah. Without that soil, a ghost story
is just a cheap thrill. But if you know that
the courtyard you're looking at was built to
quarantine a family during a horrific yellow
fever epidemic, well, suddenly the ghost story
about the haunted balcony carries genuine historical
resonance. It hits totally different. It does.
This tour provides the soundtrack that gives
the rest of your vacation its actual meaning.
It creates the context. The sources emphasize
using this walk as the anchor before you return
to the themed experiences or the jazz clubs or
the World War II Museum. It teaches you the vocabulary
of the city so you can actually read it for the
rest of your stay. All right. Because this deep
dive is all about being practical scouts for
our listeners, we need to talk about the physical
realities of the tour. We've established the
philosophy. We love the route. But let's look
at the logistics, the quirks. and the fine print.
Let's do it. If you are actually going to book
this right now, what do you need to know? The
most immediate detail that jumps out is the group
size. The Excursion Pass listing notes, there's
a strict maximum of 16 travelers per group. Oh,
wow. which is incredibly rare. It really is.
Usually you see a guide walking backward holding
a brightly colored umbrella, shouting through
a crackly portable microphone, and dragging like
50 exhausted people behind them. It's miserable,
but capping it at 16 allows for an actual conversation.
It aligns perfectly with their connection over
consumption mandate. You can't practice the power
of presence if you're straining to hear someone
over a megaphone. And I imagine it also helps
with just physically walking around. Oh, absolutely.
It allows you to actually navigate the sidewalks,
which in the French Quarter are incredibly narrow
and often packed with people. And speaking of
navigating those sidewalks, my absolute favorite
detail from the requirements section is their
strict warning about footwear. The listing explicitly
states, please wear soft -soled shoes, no high
heels or flimsy sandals. They are not messing
around with that. They are completely serious.
And having walked those streets myself, I understand
exactly why. Yeah, you are navigating 18th and
19th century infrastructure. The pavement is
this chaotic mix of uneven flagstone, warped
brick, exposed tree roots and cobblestone. It's
an ankle -twisting nightmare. It is. These are
not smooth, modern mall concourses. If you try
to walk two miles in stilettos or cheap flip
-flops, your tour is going to end at an orthopedic
clinic. It's the physical reality of a historic
city. But, you know, in reading through all these
detailed logistical listings, I did catch a glaring
contradiction across the sources. Oh, what did
you find? It's regarding who this tour is actually
for. So TripAdvisor categorizes the quarter notes
tour under ages 18, 99. OK, adults only. Right.
But simultaneously, right underneath that age
restriction, it lists the tour as stroller accessible
and dictates that infants must sit on laps. Wait,
what? Yeah. And meanwhile, the excursion pass
source probably calls it an all ages introduction
to the city's most famous neighborhood. So which
is it? Are infants sitting on laps while the
guide checks their 18 and over ID? What's going
on here? This raises an important question. And
it's a classic example of booking algorithms
forcing nuanced custom experiences into rigid
automated checkboxes. It drives me crazy when
I'm planning a trip. You literally have no idea
which tag to trust. I know. But the reality requires
looking at the actual route and the subject matter.
So the physical route starting at Jackson Square,
moving down Royal Street, and cruising along
the moonwalk by the river is flat. paved, and
generally devoid of stairs. So a stroller could
physically make it. Exactly. Therefore, the stroller
accessible and wheelchair accessible tags are
physically accurate. The infrastructure can handle
it. But the intellectual route is heavily focused
on Spanish colonial building codes, William Faulkner,
and the structural tension between public and
private spaces. Exactly. The age's 1899 tag is
likely just a default setting the provider checked
to signal that this is an adult -focused narrative.
It's an hour and 45 minutes of history, architecture,
and storytelling. It doesn't rely on jump scares
or interactive games to keep children entertained.
So while the pavement can handle a stroller,
your toddler's attention span probably cannot
handle a deep dive into 18th century municipal
fire codes. Probably not. If you are a listener
planning a family trip, this is definitely something
to weigh carefully. Luckily, the sources do provide
a safety net. Oh, they do? Yeah, they list a
dedicated accessibility phone number. It's 1
-855 -275 -5071. And they even give a specific
reference code for the tour, which is 559 -4004
-P1. We always recommend giving them a quick
call if you have any doubts about bringing young
kids or navigating mobility devices. That is
great advice. It is always better to clarify
the vibe of the tour than to show up and realize
you're spending two hours managing a toddler
meltdown while the guide is trying to talk about
Tennessee Williams. A truly terrible combination.
It really is. But overall, considering the $48
.80 price point, the logistics paint a picture
of a highly accessible, intimate, and thoughtfully
structured experience. So what does this all
mean? Let's bring all these threads together.
For roughly the price of three oversized novelty
cocktails on Bourbon Street, the Quarter Notes
Tour offers you something far more durable. Much
more durable. It gives you the geographical and
historical anchor you need to actually see the
city. By choosing connection over consumption
on your very first morning, you basically equip
yourself with the architectural and cultural
vocabulary to understand the magnificent, messy
layers of the French Quarter. It's the table
of contents to your New Orleans vacation. Exactly.
Turning you from a passive consumer of a theme
park into an active reader of a living, breathing
historical text. It fundamentally changes your
posture as a traveler. You aren't just letting
the city happen to you. You are actively engaging
with its secrets. And speaking of secrets, we
always want to leave you with a provocative thought
to mull over long after this deep dive ends.
Something to carry with you on your own travels.
Yeah, we spent a lot of time today exploring
how the French Quarter was literally designed
to hide its true self. The courtyards, the inner
lives, the true heartbeat of the city were intentionally
walled off behind heavy public facades for protection.
Hidden in plain sight. Right. And this tour teaches
you to look at those exterior brick walls not
as barriers, but as the canvas of the story itself.
It leaves you wondering... If the true history
of the city is intentionally hidden in plain
sight, just behind a locked iron gate or a stucco
wall, how much of the places we visit do we actually
see? That's a profound question. And how much
of our travel is just walking past history, completely
unaware that it's even there?