Just had a fabulous - although hot - trip to New Orleans September 27-30. This was my 3rd or 4th time there, went with 2 friends who had never been.
We stayed at the Old No 77 Hotel on Tchoupitoulis, very charming older hotel that was walkable (for us anyway) to most of what we wanted to do. Quiet and away from all the craziness of Bourbon Street. Highly recommend the hotel restaurant, Compere Lapin, which is a James Beard Award winning restaurant from chef Nina Compton.
We did a food tour, currently my favorite thing to do when traveling - you get history, food, and history of food, hard to go wrong Highly recommend Destination Kitchen. Our guide, Susan, accommodated food prefs, gave our group (12 people) some history of the city, its food, the French Quarter. She also answered questions, made recommendations and even checked reservation availability for various dinner spots. Definitely enough food to count as lunch - po'boys, alligator sausage, calas (old school beignets), gumbo, grilled oysters and more. Yum.
We checked out Frenchmen Street for music (just walk down the street and pop into whatever bar sounds good to you), Faubourg Wines for a wine tasting, had dinner at GW Fins, which was excellent. We did walk a few blocks down Bourbon Street in the early evening on our way to GW Fins - that's all you really need to do, to be honest.
We booked a tour of Whitney Plantation through Legendary Tours, and the van picked us up at our hotel. Whitney is focused exclusively on the lives of slaves, and it is somber and well done. The audio tour is included in the tour price and is comprehensive and quite good. Don't skip the small museum that provides the history of the slave trade.
Lucy's Retired Surfer's Bar is a decent lunch place not far from the Old No 77 Hotel. Dinner at a Brennan's establishment is almost a requirement and we went to The Commander's Palace - this is where Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse and others got their start. If you've been craving the level of service that has someone replacing your water glass when the ice melts, and being surrounded by servers so everyone at the table has their dinners placed at the exact same time - this is your place. Food is solid but not amazing, imo. Note there is a dress code here.
One thing we planned to do was the river jazz cruise - they have a steamboat and a paddlewheeler - but our cruise got cancelled due to mechanical issues. We did walk along the river a bit, and strolled throughout town. It's easy to get around on foot, lots of street entertainment, shops, galleries and, of course, bars and restaurants.