• 8 Breakfast (B)
• 3 Dinner (D)
• 1 Lunch (L)

• New Orleans: Enjoy an exclusive behind the scenes tour of Mardi Gras World, where the magic happens and the extravagant, vibrant floats are built each year. One of the Mardi Gras World certified artists will lead you through designing your very own Mardi Gras mask and creating your masterpiece, premium felt backed mask with glitter, feathers and more to take back as an eclectic memento of your time in The Big Easy.

Browse the Nashville Farmers’ Market, where stalls bring together produce and artisanal crafts. See a more everyday side of the city as you explore the market’s displays and the work of its local makers.

The visit offers a contrast to Nashville’s performance venues and recording studios. Colourful produce and handmade goods provide a grounded look at the people and small businesses that contribute to the city’s character.

Tour Destrehan Plantation in Louisiana with a guide, exploring its main house and a restored slave cabin. Learn about the lives of both free and enslaved people who lived and worked on the property.

As the oldest documented plantation home in the Lower Mississippi Valley, Destrehan offers a setting for examining the region’s history. The visit addresses the labour and human experiences behind the estate, not only the architecture that survives.

Insight Vacations

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

Take your seat for a live performance at the Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville show that helped make country music famous. Hear performers carry a tradition that spans established stars and newer voices, with the distinctive energy of music made for a live audience.

First broadcast in 1925 as the WSM Barn Dance, the Opry has grown alongside country music for a century. Its stage offers a direct connection to country music’s living history, rather than a story told only through recordings.

Explore Nashville on an orientation tour of Music City, taking in Riverfront Park, the Tennessee State Capitol and Centennial Park’s full-scale replica of the Parthenon. Pass Broadway’s honky-tonks, where live music and street performers give the city centre its unmistakable soundtrack.

The landmarks reveal more than Nashville’s recording heritage: the Capitol reflects its role as Tennessee’s seat of government, while the Parthenon recalls the city’s long-standing nickname, the Athens of the South.

Walk the halls of Historic RCA Studio B on a guided tour of Nashville’s oldest remaining recording studio. Stand where artists including Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and Roy Orbison recorded, and learn how sessions here helped shape the polished sound heard far beyond Tennessee.

Studio B became a cradle of the Nashville Sound in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its recording rooms bring the craft behind familiar songs into focus, from performers and musicians to the studio setting that captured them.

Explore the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum at your own pace. Browse original artifacts, photographs and recordings, alongside exhibitions tracing the performers and songs that brought country music from regional traditions to international audiences.

The museum’s account stretches from 19th-century folk roots to contemporary country. It places celebrated names within a broader musical story, offering context for the styles, instruments and voices heard throughout Nashville.

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over a hosted Welcome Dinner with wine in Nashville. Share the table and get acquainted in the city whose live-music venues, studios and stages set the tone for the journey.

This is a social dining experience rather than a sightseeing visit: a chance to exchange first impressions and settle into the hospitality associated with the American South.

Choose a guided tour and tasting at Nelson’s Green Brier, Nashville’s historic distillery and home of the Original Tennessee Whiskey. Learn about the production process and sample the finished spirit while exploring a different strand of Tennessee tradition.

The experience connects the flavour in your glass with the methods used to make it. This is one of two included Nashville activity choices; the alternative is a visit to the National Museum of African American Music.

Choose to visit the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville. Explore how African American musicians created, influenced and inspired genres that form a central part of the American soundtrack.

The museum places familiar music within the stories and cultural contributions behind it, inviting listeners across generations to hear those connections more clearly. This is one of two included Nashville activity choices; the alternative is a distillery tour and tasting at Nelson’s Green Brier.

Walk through Memphis with civil rights activist Elaine Lee Turner, one of the Lee Sisters who led sit-ins during the 1960s. Visit sites including Mason Temple and the Lee Sisters Marker as she shares personal accounts of protest and resilience.

Her first-hand perspective gives depth to the city’s role in the civil rights movement, from student-led action to the events surrounding Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. This is an opportunity to encounter Memphis history through someone who helped shape it.

Explore the Stax Museum of American Soul Music after hours with private access. Discover artifacts and exhibits celebrating the artists who defined Southern soul, including Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Carla Thomas.

The museum stands on the site of the original Stax Records studio, tying the exhibits to the place where the label’s sound took shape. Its work through the Soulsville Foundation also supports young people through music and education, giving this visit a continuing local purpose.

Step inside Graceland Mansion, Elvis Presley’s private home in Memphis. See rooms including the living room and Jungle Room, gaining a closer view of the family life behind his public image.

Explore the Entertainer Career Museum’s photographs and artifacts, along with the Presley Motors Automobile Museum. Together, the home and collections connect the King of Rock ’n’ Roll as a global performer with the belongings and spaces he kept close.

Visit Sun Studio in Memphis for a guided tour led by a local musician. Hear how recordings made here helped launch Elvis Presley and contributed to the emergence of rock ’n’ roll.

Known as the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll, the studio is also associated with artists including Johnny Cash and B.B. King. The musician’s perspective draws attention to the performances and recording choices that made this small studio so influential.

Dine at The Beauty Shop, a former Memphis beauty parlour reimagined as a New American restaurant. Its playful setting gives this included dinner a character rooted in the building’s earlier life.

Priscilla Presley is said to have had her hair done here, lending the venue a connection to the city’s Elvis story. It is a distinctive place to gather over dinner, with the atmosphere of a neighbourhood establishment rather than a conventional hotel dining room.

Explore the B.B. King Museum in Indianola with a Local Expert. See King’s guitars and interactive exhibits, visit the restored cotton gin where he once worked, and pay your respects at his final resting place.

Set in his Mississippi Delta hometown, the museum traces his journey from the cotton fields to international acclaim. The setting makes the King of the Blues’ story tangible, connecting his music to the people and places that shaped it.

Experience Indianola’s Club Ebony over lunch with a local musician. Hear stories of the venue, learn the structure of the 12-bar blues and help craft an original song before enjoying an intimate private performance.

Open since the late 1940s, the club was part of the Chitlin’ Circuit, which provided performance spaces for Black artists during segregation. Its stage welcomed musicians including Ray Charles, Count Basie and B.B. King, who later bought the club to help preserve its legacy.

Go behind the scenes at Mardi Gras World in New Orleans to see where artists create the elaborate floats used in the city’s parades. Watch the craft behind these large-scale designs, from sculpted forms to vivid decorative details.

Work with a Mardi Gras World artist to design your own mask using materials such as glitter and feathers. The hands-on session connects a personal keepsake to the artistry that gives New Orleans’ annual celebration its visual spectacle.

Discover New Orleans with a Local Expert, exploring the Garden District’s oak-shaded streets, cottages and grand mansions before taking in the lively French Quarter. Encounter contrasting sides of a city known for its architecture, food and music.

Founded by the French in 1718 and later shaped by Spanish rule, New Orleans carries layers of history in its streetscapes. The tour brings those influences into view alongside the neighbourhood atmosphere and musical energy that continue to define the city.

Choose to explore the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Its immersive exhibits and personal accounts examine the war through the experiences of those who lived it, giving historical events a human scale.

The visit offers time to engage with stories and displays that reach beyond dates and battles. This is one of two included New Orleans activity choices; the alternative is a swamp tour focused on Louisiana’s bayous, wildlife and wetlands.

Choose a swamp tour through Louisiana’s bayous, gliding across the water while looking for wildlife and learning about the region’s wetlands. The waterways offer a close view of an environment quite different from New Orleans’ city streets.

Alongside the scenery, hear about the pressures facing Louisiana’s disappearing wetlands. This is one of two included New Orleans activity choices; the alternative is a visit to the National WWII Museum.

Listen to live jazz from VIP front-row seats at Fritzel’s Jazz Club on Bourbon Street. Enjoy a pre-dinner drink and the close-up interplay of musicians improvising in one of the French Quarter’s longstanding jazz venues.

Share a Creole celebration dinner at Tujague’s, a New Orleans institution dating to 1856. Together, the music and meal bring two enduring city traditions into one hosted evening with fellow travellers.