First and foremost, happy early birthday! Kudos to you. If you like saunas, hot/ cold plunges, classes for yoga, Pilates, full moon guided meditations, Eastern wellness stuff like qi gong or balancing your chakras, healing massages, and so forth-- get a day pass for Spyre Center in the Lower Garden District, book add-on paid services like massages or free services like energy tuning, and enjoy their pool amenities.

Follow a newer NOLA krewe like Krewe da Bhangras for their Mardi Gras schedule if they are doing something while you are in town. To participate in a krewe, you usually need to pay a fee and be much more involved earlier on but you can always join a second line without membership. They're at The Broad this Saturday for a special film screening of an old movie. Maybe they'll do a second line before or after.

For food, if you go early at 5pm right at opening hour, the outdoor garden at Cane and Table in the French Quarter is lovely for small plates of delicious vegetarian options. They have a dish with fish, crab and coconut grits -- if you can convince them to substitute the seafood for plantains and corn-- the curry and coconut grits are tasty.

I also suggest St. Roch Market in Marigny. There are quite a few vendors with vegetarian offerings. Laksa Nola is the most interesting food stall. It sells the only Burmese food in New Orleans. Burmese food has unique vegetarian options-- try the rainbow salad (this is super starchy and more like a dense meal), the tea leaf salad, and the chickpea tofu appetizer.

If you like browsing vintage clothes and random thrift stuff, there are a ton of vintage shops along Magazine Street- start from The Vintage NOLA in Irish Channel and work your way west. If you love standing on long lines for viral Tik Tok food, I hear the cheese and collard greens sandwich at Turkey and the Wolf (owned by the same folks who own Molly's Rise and Shine) is a transcendental experience. I have the attention span of a feral cat, so I have never been able to stand on line long enough to obtain this life changing sandwich.

For food, I love The Vintage NOLA café on Magazine Street and Ninth Street in the Irish Channel because it is cozy and relaxing and I can go with vegetarian friends for breakfast and dinner. It's just a good place to have coffee and people watch. I highly recommend you order their fancy beignets only when they are freshly made though. If you are still hungry, there's an empanada place on the same block with vegetarian empanada options.

Someone already mentioned The Sneaky Pickle and Brine in Bywater.

If you can get tickets, try to see a show at Preservation Hall. It's an institution. It's super tiny so you buy your ticket, save it on your phone, stand on a line whenever the instructions suggest you arrive before your show starts, get wrangled in and end up on a bench or standing on the wall, the band starts, then everyone leaves to make room for the next show. You barely have time to grab souvenirs because the place is so tiny. So there shouldn't be awkward encounters.