City of New Orleans and Katrina tour

Join us on our comfortable air conditioned mini-bus for a three hour tour that will give you a fascinating overview of New Orleans. Experience the history and culture of the Creoles with your licensed tour guide. No trip to New Orleans would be complete without seeing the highlights of our city and some of the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina’s flood waters.

During your tour you will see Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo and the French Market. Your tour guide will give you an overview of the "French Quarter" and will point out areas of interest so that you can explore them later at your own pace.

You’ll travel slowly toward City Park and view 100 year old homes along Esplanade Avenue on the way to the "Dueling Oaks" of New Orleans' City Park. Visit an above-ground cemetery, where you will go inside on a short guided tour. Your tour guide will explain how the people of New Orleans bury their dead above ground in re-useable tombs, a tradition born out of necessity, not choice.

Drive slowly down St. Charles Avenue, the American side of New Orleans and see some of the homes of the Garden District. You will pass Ann Rice's home, Governor Claiborne's daughter’s home, the Elms Mansion, and much more.

As part of this tour, we will also go to the Lower 9th ward and view where Hurricane Katrina broke the levee and swept the residents and their homes away. This was the area of the greatest devastation in New Orleans. You will see how the lower 9th ward residents are putting their lives back together with the help of volunteers and Brad Pitt's project "Make It Right".

The tour will be educational & enlightening, so that you can revisit and explore New Orleans' attractions and points of interest. This is a must for anyone coming to the City.

Katrina was a huge challenge for our tour business in August 2005, and after the storm and flooding there were no tourists. For eight months after Katrina, my two sons and I carried out roof and fence repairs. We then decided to restart our business and so we kicked off a City/ Katrina tour that included the good and the bad. We tried to highlight the attractions as they were restarted, and we showed the 9th ward as the bad. It was slow going, but over the years since Katrina, tourism has slowly rebounded. We invite you to come to the Big Easy - New Orleans. We have so much to offer and Bourbon Street is still a 24 hour party.

The family & staff of Louisiana Tour Company stands ready to service your tour needs.

The tour lasts 3 hours, with pick-ups taking place at either 9.30am or 1.30pm.

My name is Milton Walker and back in 1989 my father, Ray Walker, asked me to help him fix up an old pontoon boat that had enough seating for six people. He found a place for a swamp tour boat to dock in the small fishing village of Crown Point. He bought a van, made a single page brochure and began operation. He started the swamp business, south and west of the French Quarter of New Orleans. In the beginning, he sometimes had to pick up passengers and then be his own captain. That was our beginning.

I got my captain's license and started doing tours with my father back in 1993. Around 1995, he traded in two small boats for a larger swamp tour boat that seated 60 passengers. A year later, he got a second swamp tour boat. In 1999, I took over the Swamp tour business with two vans & two tour boats. I then became a licensed “City Tour Guide”.

Since then, we have expanded our business to a full service tour company. We have our own transportation company with eleven minibuses and vans. We offer 3 hour New Orleans/Katrina tours, tours of the Oak Alley or Laura Plantation and Swamp Tours by boat. We also have Ghost walking tours of the French Quarter.

We are a local, family owned business from the beginning. Since we are not a big corporation, our business depends on a quality experience. You will be given first class treatment from the beginning to the end. We pride ourselves on being the best that we can be. 99% of the guests that come on our tour tell us that our tour was the highlight of their visit to New Orleans' French Quarter.