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If your plan is to take your holidays to New Orleans it's a good idea to plan a head of time and to go with an attitude that is in the mood for fun. New Orleans is probably one of the best places to travel to in the entire Continental United States. This is a city of proud citizens that have risen above the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and have open arms to the millions of people who come to visit them every year. Going to New Orleans can be one of the greatest experiences of a lifetime.

The first thing you should do is to sit down and figure out when you want to visit this great city. Remember that the weather in the Fall, Spring and Winter months are the mildest and it's the middle of summer when it's extremely hot and humid. You also might want to consider crowds, if you really aren't much for huge crowds then you definitely want to avoid Mardi Gras and the April Jazz Fest.

Next thing you want to figure out is how are you going to get there and what does your budget allow? You can get there by every mode of transportation available from car to even a cruise liner. There are about 14 different airlines that will take you there with Southwest probably being the least expensive of them all. You can easily book your flight online and it is generally discounted when you purchase your tickets this way.

After you have figured out a time to go and how you are going to get there you will now need to figure out where you are going to stay for your visit. If you want easy access to the Mississippi River and all the great sites to see within the city, you are going to want to reserve a room in one of the many different hotels that are located in the French Quarter. Check with the Chamber of Commerce or their Visitor's Center for a list of the many different hotels that are available, many of which have their own websites that allow you to reserve right online.

Once you get to New Orleans you will be overwhelmed at all there is to do, see, taste and experience, a lot of which are free. There are many parks that are free, several different museums in the area that are free, listening to music as you experience the French Quarter is another free attraction especially if you use one of their free audio tours.

Other attractions that are not too costly are taking a tour of one or more of the incredible plantations that are all within a short driving distance of town. The most famous being the Oak Alley Plantation, we all know that one from “Gone With The Wind” and many other movies focused on the South.

You can also take tours such as voodoo tours, a variety of different historical tours, swamp and bayou tours a long with tours of the famous cemeteries that you often see in a variety of different movies that have been filmed in New Orleans.

Don't forget the Garden District. You can take a trolley to this part of the town and visit many of the different historical homes including the home where Interview with a Vampire was filmed and even the home of Anne Rice.

You can even become what they call a voluntourist and that is someone that comes to New Orleans and wants to help the areas that still need help due to Katrina. Tourists can go to the Visitor's Center or Chamber of Commerce to get information about how to sign up to volunteer a few hours of their time while they are on vacation.

And don't forget to get your beignet fix. Although there are many, many places that serve the famous beignet, there is no better place to get it than the original at the Cafe du Monde. Word of warning though, never wear black when you go out to Cafe due Monde, you'll be sorry.  

So, you are planning your holidays to New Orleans. This is great news, however; did you know you are probably traveling to one of the most notoriously haunted cities in the United States? That's right besides millions of visitors to Madi Gras, the Jazz Fest and just for the city itself, there are others there that we can't see, or can we? That's up to you and your own fascination and imagination. If you are going to New Orleans for a different kind of excitement, you might want to check out it's colorful and even checkered history and discover some of the most haunted places in the area.

To be able to enjoy the darker more haunted side of the city you must let your natural curiosity run wild. You need to just completely let go and make sure that you visit all of the places that most of the locals guarantee are haunted.

Be brave and don't let the thought of ghosts and spirits stop you from having some pretty thrilling times. Your bravery will help a lot when you go inside one of the many homes that are considered to be haunted, or if you decide to go to a cemetery that you have heard is one of the scariest in town. Some of the more famous spots you might want to check out would be Madame Lalaurie's Mansion, the St. Louis Cemetery as well as the Saint John Bayou. There are many tour guides that will be more than willing to take you to any of these locations with a little bit of prodding and some good hard earned American cash.

While you are doing your walking around some of these places that are reported to be haunted make sure that you let your imagination revert back to your childhood so that you are up for anything. See, even if you don't actually see a ghost, let your imagination visualize for you, you may not see one, but you still might experience the presence of one nearby.

We all know, there is a world other than ours that is a supernatural world, a world that we can't enter until it's our time, but there are certain circumstances that may enable them to have a way to touch us from there. So let your mind be an open book. You need to have an open mindset so that you will freely step into the unknown and be willing to accept what happens.

It is always a good idea to bring either your digital camera or camcorder with you when you are on one of these haunted tours. Not only are the places you going wonderful to capture, but you never know when something might happen that you want to capture. Also, even if you can't see something, there is something about the camera or camcorder that sometimes enables them to capture strange things that can't be seen by the naked eye.

Note: This is not meant to be funny, if you decide to go for a walk in any of the cemeteries in New Orleans, never do this on your own. No matter where you go, it's important to know that there is always far much more safety when you travel in numbers. So take friends or go with one of the tour groups that have special tours that you can take through these eery yet beautiful places.