This story originally appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine as “The Big Easy.”
New Orleans is perched upon a 7,000-year-old expanse of alluvium called the Lower Mississippi River Delta. The landscape is humid, muddy, and flat, either at sea level or just below it. Before Europeans settled here in the early 1700s, several indigenous tribes called the area Bulbancha, “the place of many tongues.” For the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Ishak, Tunica, and Natchez nations, the location was a riparian trading post. For the French and Spanish, it was a colonial port. Since the Americans purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803, New Orleans has been a vibrant city wide open to immigrants and influences from around the world, especially Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Today, millions of tourists visit New Orleans each year to experience its exceptional cultural repertoire of music, cuisine, architecture, museums, and festivals.
New Orleans is fantastic for cyclists who plan it right. The best seasons to visit New Orleans are early spring and late fall, when the weather is calm and the festivals are scheduled every weekend.
Beginner / Day Trip
While the street life of New Orleans is thoroughly inviting, the street surfaces are hostile — an inevitable outcome of layering gravel, concrete, and asphalt roads atop soggy earth. At least the bumpy streets have been painted with hundreds of bike lanes in the last 15 years, including the new Lafitte Greenway, a 2.6-mile linear park converted from an abandoned railroad track and shipping canal corridor. Take the Greenway to City Park and spend a couple of hours walking through the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden. Treat yourself to one of New Orleans’s photogenic Catholic cemeteries, such as St. Roch No. 1 Cemetery near the Marigny neighborhood. Cycle through the new river-themed Crescent Park on your way to the city’s oldest neighborhood, the French Quarter. Continue through the bike-friendly Tremé neighborhood, once the epicenter of a free People of Color community and the birthplace of jazz. Give yourself a break from cycling at some point and hop on the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar for a nineteenth century–paced train ride uptown.
If you have a car and are aching for smooth tarmac, drive up to the “northshore” to pedal the Tammany Trace, a 31-mile wildlife conservation corridor.
Intermediate / Multiday
A continuous paved path caps hundreds of miles of levees that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed on both sides of the Mississippi River after the Great Flood of 1927. Most locals depart from picturesque Audubon Park and ride a couple of hours upriver and then turn around, but the levee paths are so consistent that you could theoretically meander all the way up to Memphis, Tennessee (510 miles), or St. Louis, Missouri (1,278 miles), if you wanted to.
A fun four-day loop trip involves pedaling the levee on the east bank of the river 106 miles to Baton Rouge (88 feet elevation, total), staying a night, and then heading back to New Orleans (23 feet elevation) on the west bank of the river. The total trip is 275 miles. On the way to Baton Rouge, cyclists will glide roof-height through dozens of small towns and former plantations, such as the Andry Plantation, near the town of LaPlace, where the 1811 Slave Revolt began. You’ll also pass hundreds of farms, bayous, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants. Check out the visitor center at the Bonnet Carré Spillway, a 1.5-mile-wide flood control structure and six-mile-long floodway built in 1931. Visit the National Hansen’s Disease (Leprosy) Museum in Carville. Stay one night at Auberge du Chene Vert B&B in Paulina.
When you arrive at the state capital at the end of Day Two, stay on the Belle of Baton Rouge, a riverboat casino and hotel. In the morning, check out the Shaw Center for the Arts, the Capitol Park Museum, or the Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center near Hilltop Arboretum.
For the return trip to New Orleans, travel along the west bank of the river and soar past dozens more farms, plantations, bayous, and industrial plants. This side of the river takes you through a collection of towns worth a stop, like the historic German Coast in Killona, the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville, or the Whitney Plantation Museum in Wallace. Stay a night at the Victorian on the Avenue in historic downtown Donaldsonville. The trip ends with a ferry across the river from Algiers Point to New Orleans.
Art and Culture
Local radio station WWOZ’s website and the free Offbeat Magazine are solid guides for daily happenings. Frenchmen Street is a popular four-block stretch of the Marigny dense with music venues, bars, and restaurants that are open every night. Another great option for music and food is Bacchanal, a Bywater neighborhood favorite with a casual courtyard, a rotation of quality contemporary jazz bands, and a first-class wine menu. If you’re visiting over a weekend and have free time on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, join a downtown or uptown Second Line parade and dance behind a brass band.
If you plan to visit New Orleans for Mardi Gras, note that bikes are a popular way to beat the traffic jams and outsmart the parking crises — the streetscape is compromised for cars because of so many road closures near parade routes. There are at least three weeks of carnival leading up to the Tuesday morning of Mardi Gras, so visits can be planned for weekends other than the final four-day weekend if you want to avoid the largest crowds.
Groceries and Food
Eat at neighborhood restaurants like the Sneaky Pickle, Satsuma, or the Joint. Uptown, check out Surrey’s, Mais Arepas, or Peche. Pick up groceries from local markets like Rouses or Robert and take them to City Park or the riverfront for a picnic. Also be sure to check out Bar Tonique, Cure, and the Sazerac House for food and drink.
Go and Stay
If you journey to New Orleans by Amtrak or bus, you’ll arrive at Union Passenger Terminal in the city center. If you travel by plane, you’ll arrive at Armstrong International in the suburbs, which is a 22-mile bike ride along the river’s east bank levee path to downtown New Orleans. Or grab a taxi, rideshare, or the RTA bus 202 “Airport Express.”
There aren’t great camping options near the city’s center, so plan on treating yourself to a hotel room as you pass through New Orleans. Book a night at the Quisby in the Lower Garden District or Hotel Peter & Paul in the Marigny neighborhood.
Locals often use bike lanes for getting to work or for going out to see music with friends. When they do, they don’t ride their expensive bike. Instead, they take their less fancy bike, and they lock it up well with one or two locks, because bike theft in New Orleans is very common.
Blue Bikes is New Orlean’s rideshare, and you have to download an app to get started. There are a few Blue Bike stations in the touristy neighborhoods of the city. For maps of the city’s bike lanes and a comprehensive list of local bike shops, visit the Bike Easy website, a local nonprofit.
The post A Bike Touring Guide to New Orleans appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.
