Board your comfortable coach in the French Quarter, and soak up the vibrance of New Orleans' best-known area as your guide shares facts and anecdotes about New Orleans' history and culture. Travel to the Ninth Ward, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Here you will see the house of music legend Fats Domino and learn about his harrowing experiences during the hurricane, when levees broke and caused massive flooding.

Your tour continues past the grand oaks on Esplanade Avenue, a shady stretch where carriages once traveled for respite from the summer heat. Visit an aboveground cemetery and stop at City Park, where you'll visit either Morning Call Cafe -- known for its coffee and beignets, a popular New Orleans pastry -- or Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which features more than 50 world-class sculptures in a lush, 5-acre setting.

Next, journey to the shores of Lake Ponchartrain, the massive wetland that flooded much of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Here you'll visit the New Canal Lighthouse Museum, which is located in a lighthouse that was decimated by the storm but reconstructed and reopened in spring 2013. On your guided tour of the museum, take in excellent views of the levees on the lakefront and the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, the longest bridge over water in the world.

In the course of your half-day tour, you'll visit well-known New Orleans neighborhoods including Faubourg Marigny, Faubourg St John, Lakeview, Uptown and Carrollton. Along the way, see Xavier University of Louisiana in Carrollton. Established in 1925, the institution is the only historically black, Catholic university in the United States. You'll also follow the route of the St Charles streetcars past two more well-respected private universities -- Loyola and Tulane -- before returning to the French Quarter, where your 3.5-hour tour of New Orleans concludes.