Springtime in Lafayette, Louisiana, means gardens are bursting with azaleas in every shade of pink, peach, red, and lavender, while magnolia trees present snowy white blossoms. Spanish moss-draped cypress and tupelo trees in swamps and lakes proudly display their new green foliage as you paddle past nesting herons, egrets, and spoonbills, while alligators and turtles sun themselves on fallen logs.
Music, especially the Cajun, zydeco, and swamp pop that provide the soundtrack to life in Lafayette, rings out from festival stages, jam sessions, and dancehalls, while the enticing aromas of crawfish boils and Cajun and Creole cooking permeate the air. Spring in Lafayette is festival season, crawfish season, garden season, getting-out-in-nature season, and all-around-enjoying-life season.
Whether visiting for a weekend or a month, there are always unique experiences bringing you back to the Happiest City in America.
One festival locals and visitors look forward to all year is Festival International de Louisiane taking place April 27 to May 1, 2022. A global-themed, annual music, arts, and food event, Festival International is the largest international music and arts festival in the United States. Festival International welcomes 500 performing and visual artists from seventeen countries to converge across six stages with Lafayette’s artists.
For the culinary-minded, springtime also ushers in crawfish season, and Lafayette is the perfect place to sample boiled crawfish. Visitors looking to immerse themselves in all things crawfish can attend the Crawfish Festival on May 6 to 8. More than thirty Cajun and Creole bands perform over three days, coupled with crawfish dishes prepared in every way imaginable–fried, boiled, étouffée, bisque, boudin, pie, jambalaya, and crawdogs–along with other Cajun and Creole favorites.
If you’re looking for even more ideas to put a spring in your two-step, check out Lafayette’s springtime guide at LafayetteTravel.com/Spring.
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Hannah Lee Leidy
Hannah Lee Leidy is a food writer and editor based in the Carolinas. She is currently the digital content editor for Our State magazine, a position she came into following her time at The Local Palate. Her contributions have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Culture, and Eater. She’s spent time working in restaurants in both front and back of house positions, doing everything from burning gateaux to expediting to shaking a Manhattan (don’t worry, this only happened once). An avid curd nerd, her favorite beat is reporting on boutique cheese makers; she’ll sniff out every creamery near and far whenever traveling. When not parenting a Bernese mountain pup named Ava, you’ll find her running or working on her lamination technique.
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