Things to Do in Chalmette

Formed in 1989, the Louisiana Tour Company started out by organizing Swamp tours narrated by knowledgeable boat captains. Today, the company has grown to offer other excursions such as city Ghost tours on foot, visits to plantations in a van, and Airboat tours of swamp and marshland on the backs of indigenous amphibians. Three-hour New Orleans City and Post-Katrina tours invite sightseers to load up into a minibus to visit city landmarks and areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Winding through the cobblestone streets of various New Orleans neighborhoods, knowledgeable guides lead groups through notoriously haunted and historic spots during 2-hour walking tours. Each tour guide possesses experience with and/or passion for the occult and New Orleans history, and the fleet includes the founder of the New Orleans Paranormal & Occult society, as well as a member of the Louisiana Historical Society. With tours running daily, the meanderings whisk guests past real voodoo altars during the voodoo tour, or into the world of the undead with a vampire tour. Guests can eschew the spooks with a Garden tour or a cemetery tour that focuses on the neighborhoods’ history and inability to sleep with the lights off.

Since 1924, Gray Line Tours has introduced guests to the sights of New Orleans through an eclectic collection of tours, from leisurely walking tours to heart-pounding ghost tours. In addition to taking immersive history or plantation tours, participants can climb aboard an authentic steamboat, which preserves its engine room and original cartoon-mouse captain in a museum-quality exhibit, for a dinner jazz cruise.

The learned guides of Spirit Tours New Orleans escort visitors through the Big Easy's streets, illuminating its rich history of mysticism, culture, and architecture. After examining obscure burial methods in the city's oldest cemetery St. Louis Cemeterey #1, cemetery and voodoo tours turn guest attention to tales of voodoo practitioners, such as Marie Laveau. Spooky-story fans listen intently to tales of slave owners and creoles while wandering through the French Quarter, and strolling film buffs judge how accurately films such as Interview with the Vampire and the critically panned Tuba from the Black Lagoon portrayed their locales. In addition to offering a garden-district tour, which highlights plantation-style mansions and elegant Saint Charles Avenue homesteads, Spirit Tours combines several of its tours into a combo package that covers voodoo, ghost stories, scandals, and bar hopping during one French Quarter jaunt.

Nestled in Audubon Park's rolling, verdant grounds dappled with tall oak trees, Cascade Stables' riding facilities train horse riders and enthusiasts in all levels of the equestrian sport. Seasoned trainers guide private and group lessons through trots and canters around a 60'x140' outdoor riding arena and a 80'x160' covered indoor arena, or through the park's relative wilderness on trail rides, where they may glimpse a wild Robin Hood in its natural habitat. Extended training programs instill riders and their horses with the passion and skills necessary to compete nationally. In addition to its arenas, the facilities boast amenities such as 44 rubber-matted stalls, which cradle horses when not in use, and a trio of air-conditioned tack rooms, where riders can store pet snowmen during lessons.

Within the springy confines of Space Walk’s Vertical Rush, tykes ricochet like excited electrons across tunnels, slides, and climbing walls. The springy obstacle course is one of hundreds housed inside Space Walk of Greater New Orleans’ 43,000-square-foot facility. Though those bounce houses typically measure 15’x15’, the facility can supply revelers with inflatables that measure up to 23-feet tall.

To ensure safe gravity defiance, trained bounce experts help parents hone in on an inflatables that suits tykes’ ages, interests and varying Buzz Aldrin impersonations. Additionally, the staff not only delivers and sets up houses, but happily trains party throwers in proper bounce-house technique, along with scrubbing down the houses before and after use.