Tour begins: 5:00 PM, Hotel Monteleone. Welcome to New Orleans and French Louisiana! A transfer is included from Louis Armstrong International Airport to the Hotel Monteleone. Please join us for this evening's welcome cocktail reception at your historic hotel at the foot of Royal Street in the heart of the French Quarter, followed by dinner at Hotel Monteleone.

Begin the day with a flightseeing tour of New Orleans for views of the French Quarter, Mississippi River, canals, and wetlands, with commentary by your pilot. You'll also learn about the unique geological environment of New Orleans, America's only city situated below sea level, and its vulnerability to natural and manmade disasters at a private lecture by Nellie Watson, an expert on the interplay of humans, architecture and the environment. This evening, you'll get another true taste of New Orleans' famous cuisine when you dine at Tujague's Restaurant - a local favorite for 160 years.

Today, begin your discovery of Louisiana's River Road sites with a visit to Houmas House and Gardens along the big bend of the Mississippi River. Named for the local Houmas Indians who owned the land until its purchase by planters in the mid-18th century, Houmas House was the heart of a working sugar plantation whose holdings once grew as large as 300,000 acres, and at its height in the late 1800s produced some 20 million pounds of sugar annually. A docent provides insider information on a guided historic house tour; have lunch, and stroll through some of its 38 acres of exquisite gardens. This afternoon, visit Whitney Plantation, Louisiana's only museum with an exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people. A guided walking tour of Whitney's memorials and restored buildings - including slave cabins, a freedmen's church, detached kitchen and outbuildings, a 1790s owner's house and memorials built to honor the enslaved - reveals the reality of a pre-Civil War Louisiana sugar plantation, and invites you to remember those who built and worked this property. Return to Nottoway Resort for dinner and an evening spent as you wish.

Visit more iconic destinations as you continue to tour New Orleans with Tauck today. Begin with sightseeing in the Garden District, whose National Historic Landmark district preserves historic mansions dating from the 1830s to about 1900, reflecting the prosperity of their wealthy builders prior to and following the Civil War, as well as the city's antiques district. Then hop aboard an authentic New Orleans streetcar for another Tauck Exclusive - a private streetcar tour along Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, accompanied by a New Orleans resident. After a Garden District walking tour, return to your hotel and spend the rest of the day exploring more of New Orleans at your leisure. Tonight, experience more of the best of the Cresent City as you head to Galotoire's Restaurant, one of New Orleans' celebrate restaurants since it debuted in 1905.