Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday is always 46 days before Easter. This year, Fat Tuesday is in early spring, March 7, which means the weather may be better and you still have time to reserve hotel room.

• Mardi Gras A Web site has been set up to provide news, history, trivia and live coverage. The site also provides information about restaurants, airfares and hotel bookings.
• New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau
• French Quarters
• Music, Culture & Food of New Orleans
• Louisiana Additional Resources

Worlds Top Festival

You can hear it all at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, April 28 through May 7. Tickets in advance are $15 a day. The festival started 31 years ago with Mahalia Jackson singing at Louis Armstrong Park. It outgrew the park and moved to the Fair Ground racetrack, a short cab ride from the French Quarter. Some 495,00 people attended last year.

The "jazz" in the title is something of a misnomer. There are 12 tents and stages featuring jazz of every kind, but also blues, rock 'n' roll, zydeco, rockabilly, reggae, Cajun, bluegrass, Afro-Caribbean and every other hyphenated musical form imaginable.

One of the hottest Web sites on Feb. 14 will be New Orleans Jazz Fest , where this spring's lineup will be announced.

Accommodations

There are some 27,000 hotels rooms in New Orleans, and they fill up fast for Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest

• For free New Orleans Good Times Guide which contain hotel ads call 800-584-3166
• New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau also will provide hotel information call 800-672-6124.

Most of the following hotels are elegant choices, with top-hated bellman, French antiques in the chandelier-lit lobbies and lush courtyards perfect for your chickory coffee or morning mimosa

• Omni Royal Orleans may be the best big hotel in the French Quarters and also the priciest.
• Windsor Court is probably the plushest outside the French Quarter
• The Royal Sonesta, Inn on Bourbon, Bourbon Orleans, Hotel Provincial and Maison Dupuy are excellent picks in the Quarter. The Sonesta features a heated pool on the third floor overlooking a lush courtyard.

• Among the finest: Bienville House, The Frenchmen, Creole House, Dauphine Orleans, Saint Ann/Marie Antoinette, The Saint Louis, Place D'Armes, Prince Conti, Hotel Maison De Ville and the Audubon Cottages

• Chains like Westin, Marriott, Hyatt Regency, Hilton, Radisson, Sheraton and Ritz Carlton have hotels.

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