Hi there.
Haven't spent much time in Houston, so can't help you with spots near there. Near Baton Rouge, check out the beautiful plantations alongside the Mississippi River, especially the ones between Baton Rouge and Natchez. New Orleans is amazingly, with the French Quarter being the highlight, although there are some gigantic architecturally beautiful homes just west of the French Quarter that are worth taking the time to go see.
Just past Jackson Square is the French Market, and a gigantic market area. The St. Louis cemetery just east of the French Quarter has many voodoo queens buried there and some unusual crypts (everything is above ground, since you can't bury bodies in the ground as New Orleans is below sea level). The craziest place is, of course, Bourbon Street, which will have music of every variety (especially jazz) every night of the year.
This is a great town for eating also, with fantastic restaurants all around, some of the best known being K-Paul's, Commander's Palace, and the French Market Cafe.
Memphis is also for jazz (see BB King's place), and has some of the best barbeque in the world. Elvis Presley lived at Graceland (still open for visiting--located just south of town). He recorded many of his songs at the Sun recording studio just down the street from BB King's place.
Nashville is now the home of country music. In town are the Grand Old Opry, Opryland Hotel, and the Opryland amusement park. There is a place to visit in the middle of town called the Wild Horse Saloon--and also by is the Country Music Hall of Fame. This is also where former President Andrew Jackson lived and his home "The Hermitage" is still available for visiting and sits on a large plantation.
Dallas is the home of the newest, largest football stadium in the world. It costs over 1 billion US dollars to build and has the world's largest TV inside hanging from the ceiling (and showing replays of all sporting event plays as the games take place). April is kind of a slow month for this, though, so don't expect much in the way of action unless it is hosting soccer games then. Dallas is a very modern city--and, as they say about Texas--everything is "bigger" there--meaning they have lots of land--so most everything is spread out across five times the land they would use in a city like New York for the same building/highway/park. People there love to spend time on the lakes or doing some hunting out in the wild--or having barbeque parties in their backyards with neighbors.
Little Rock is a pretty little town, with lots of great white ash trees all around--but it doesn't have a lot of notable features--same for Jackson.
April is one of the best times to visit Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. It gets way to hot and humid in the summer in these states--and quite cold in the winter on these large flat prairie areas--but April should be magnificent to visit these spots. Have a great trip.
One last place I should probably mention is Vicksburg, Mississippi, just a short ways west of Jackson, Mississippi. This is a city that sits high on the hillside overlooking the Mississippi River, and was famous for its fighting during the Civil War. Its was the last southern city on the River to fall to the Federal forces during the war.
An interesting fact is that the southern citizens and militia in this city held out against a large US army commanded by US Grant for about 60 days despite being without any food or ammunition being re-supplied during that period. In order to take the city, Grant had to first attack from the north, then circle west and come up from the south, then fight off the southern army coming to re-supply them from the east, then attack the city from the east and again from the north. Even then, he only took the town because they were running out of food, and were likely to starve otherwise.
People tell me its a scenic town, although I personally have not ever been there.
Oh wow, thanks ever so much for all your info I will definetly be looking into that some more. Thank you for your time and thoughts.
If ur guna b around New Orleans around 9th of Feb thats when Mardi Grahs starts n its ment to be heaps of fun. We are driving through Florida atm n will head to New Oleans for the big parties!
If you're in New Orleans in April, you should check out Creole PubCrawl's Crawdad and Bluegrass Crawl on April 6th! Creole PubCrawl does tours in the Arts & Warehouse district in NOLA, but this event is going to be huge! They're going around to a few of their normal spots with three crawls joining into one big parade before the last stop at the Rusty Nail.
If you can't make it to this event, you should still check out their daily Historic or Party Crawls. It's a fun way to get some history of the city while participating in the time-old-tradition of classic New Orleans cocktails. Check all of it out at -snip-
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