In Defense of the Tourist Trap: Why Following the Crowd Might Be the Smartest Way To Travel

This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue. If you ever go to New Orleans, one of your first stops should be the very unhidden gem of Café Du Monde's French Market location. There you can buy some New Orleans special beignets and, if the weather is hot enough (it almost certainly will be) a frozen coffee to wash them down. Café Du Monde is popular. The advice to go is often not popular. If you scan internet messaging boards about what to do in New Orleans, posters will often caution against a visit to Café Du Monde. It is dismissed as the most hated of all destinations, a "tourist trap": an overrated, overcrowded cliché that exists to suck money from unsophisticated travelers in exchange for an unsatisfyingly ordinary experience. Yet this aversion to Café Du Monde is obviously mistaken to anyone who… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.