St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans

I toured this cemetary last July as part of a tour which I arranged through my hotel. The guide was excellent and provided a lot of history and humor throughout our two hour tour. I would highly recommend visiting this site as part of a tour, not alone.

I had read on different sites that this was boring and man should I have listened!! I wasted 120.00 on this snoozefest. The cemetary was pretty and kind of interesting but not for 2 hrs and our guide rambled on and on about weird things that had nothing to do with the cemetary. After the boring tour we went to the voodoo priestess and is that one cuckoo lady. She rambled on and on and I have no idea what she was talking about. Our whole tour group was like what the heck. Save your money and do not take a tour. If you really want to see the cemetary go during the tour hours alone and you'll be ok.

The atmosphere was amazing and all of the information that we were told was fantatsic. As we are from Britain, we do not have anything even similar. It is truly a once in a lifetime oppurtunity to have been there!

Local insight: The New Orleans cemeteries are a fantastic experience that I highly recommend, however DO NOT GO ALONE! Take only a guided tour (which can be pricey), or go with a large group of people. Without a guided tour, you probably will not know what to see anyway, and the tour guides will cover the history and point out the more prominent deceased to you. Never go at night, unless part of a tour. The neighborhoods simply are not safe around either of the St. Louis Cemeteries, and the large above ground tombs give the real life ghouls plenty hiding spaces to attack an unsuspecting tourist. Not trying to scare anyone away, but please be cautious.

It is one of those things that tourists must go to see. Aparently the story is that in ground graves were constantly being flooded and would pop up, so they built above ground graves. It's very interesting to see if you've never seen an above ground grave. Some of them are quite elaborate.