New Orleans has many amazing things to offer, but the tree-lined streets and beautiful houses in the Garden District are pretty hard to beat. It's here that you'll find a great example of something uniquely New Orleans... the crypts in Lafayette Cemetery. Since the water table is so low (just 12-inches in the older days), there was no way to bury a coffin without it popping right back up the next time a heavy rain hits. So, to accommodate the problem, they have above-ground burials in really cool family crypts:

But the garden district is famous for its classic houses, and you can see a lot of them here... one of the best is owned by novelist Anne Rice (of Interview with a Vampire fame):

Also in the Garden District is one of my favorite zoos in the world... the Audubon Zoo. It's not only really huge, it's one of the more "animal friendly" in that they painstakingly re-create a natural environment to make the animals feel more at home. This silver fox has a great set-up with a den and space to run around and everything:

And, given Audubon's bird infatuation, there's some pretty cool bird exhibits as well. One of the critters that caught my eye this time around was this fuzzy little thing whose name I cannot remember: