When family or friends come to town, the question is always the same: “What should we do while you’re here?” Finding things to do in Ocean Springs doesn’t have to be stressful or costly. Some of the best days are built around good food, a walk beneath the live oaks, a little art, and time near the water. These are seven of our favorite ways to show out-of-town guests why Ocean Springs is such a special place to call home.
1. Take a Guided Walking Food Tour of Downtown
If your guests have never experienced Ocean Springs before, start with the part of town where so much of its personality comes together: downtown. A guided walking food tour turns an afternoon into much more than lunch. You move from restaurant to restaurant, taste several local dishes, walk the historic streets, and hear the stories behind the people and places that have shaped the community.
That makes the Original Downtown Ocean Springs Food Tour especially useful when friends and family are visiting. Instead of choosing one restaurant and then trying to figure out what to do next, the experience combines food, history, culture, sightseeing, and plenty of conversation into one outing. By the time the tour is over, your visitors have their bearings—and usually a growing list of places they want to revisit before heading home.
2. Discover Walter Anderson Together
The Walter Anderson Museum of Art is one of those places that can surprise people who don’t normally plan vacations around museums. Travelers regularly describe discovering Anderson for the first time as a highlight of visiting Ocean Springs, particularly once they begin connecting his work to the birds, plants, islands, and coastal landscape they have been seeing outside.
Give yourselves enough time to really look around rather than treating it as a quick museum stop. The extraordinary murals inside the Ocean Springs Community Center alone can turn into a family conversation as everyone starts spotting different animals and details. It is also an easy outing to pair with downtown shopping, coffee, lunch, or a walk toward Front Beach afterward.
3. Give Them an Afternoon to Wander Downtown
Again and again, travelers recommend downtown Ocean Springs simply because it is enjoyable to wander. There is no need for a rigid agenda. Park the car and let the afternoon unfold among locally owned boutiques, galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and colorful storefronts tucked beneath the live oaks. It is compact enough to explore comfortably, but varied enough that different generations can each find something that interests them.
This is one of those occasions when having out-of-town visitors can make you appreciate your own town differently. Duck into a gallery you have passed a hundred times, let your guests shop for something made locally, stop for coffee or a cocktail, and take the side street you normally drive past. If everyone gets hungry along the way, our guide to the best restaurants in Ocean Springs is a good place to narrow down the choices.
4. Take the Family Down to Front Beach
You don’t need to dedicate an entire day to the beach for it to become one of the most memorable parts of a visit. Front Beach works just as well for an hour around sunset as it does for a lazy afternoon. Walk beside the Mississippi Sound, watch the boats, find a bench beneath the trees, or bring something to eat and let everyone slow down for a while. Travelers frequently single out the shoreline as one of the easiest pleasures of visiting Ocean Springs.
If younger children are part of the group, neighboring Fort Maurepas Park makes the stop even easier. The playground and seasonal splash pad give the kids somewhere to move while adults enjoy the waterfront setting. For visiting parents or grandparents, a quiet beach walk followed by dinner downtown can be just as satisfying. You can compare Front Beach with other nearby shoreline options in our guide to Ocean Springs beaches.
5. Walk or Bike Across the Biloxi Bay Bridge
The Biloxi Bay Bridge is something many of us drive across without giving much thought, but on foot or bicycle it becomes an entirely different experience. Travelers specifically recommend the pedestrian route for its broad views over the water and its connection to the shoreline walking paths. From above the bay, you can look back toward Ocean Springs, across toward Biloxi, and out over the boats moving below.
This is a particularly good choice when visiting friends or relatives would rather do something active than spend another afternoon indoors. Go early in the morning or later in the day when the temperatures are more comfortable, bring water, and do as much or as little of the crossing as the group feels like doing. Even a partial walk gives visitors a perspective on the Coast they simply do not get through a car window.
6. Show Them a Piece of Ocean Springs Art History
Shearwater Pottery is easy to recommend because it feels inseparable from Ocean Springs itself. Founded by Peter Anderson in 1928, the family pottery remains a working creative place rather than simply a historic attraction. Visitors can browse handmade ceramics shaped by the colors, wildlife, and landscapes of the Gulf Coast while standing on the same property where generations of the Anderson family have worked.
Travelers often mention Shearwater alongside the Walter Anderson Museum, but the experiences feel very different. The museum helps explain the Anderson family’s artistic legacy; Shearwater lets you encounter a piece of that tradition that is still alive. It is an especially good place to bring visitors who appreciate art, handmade objects, architecture, or simply finding a souvenir that could only have come from Ocean Springs.
7. Escape Into the Bayou at Gulf Islands National Seashore
Ocean Springs is not only restaurants, galleries, and beaches. The Davis Bayou Area of Gulf Islands National Seashore reveals the quieter, wilder side of the community. Boardwalks and trails lead through coastal habitat, while overlooks give everyone a chance to slow down and watch for birds and other wildlife. There are also picnic areas, a fishing pier, a boat launch, and a visitor center, making it easy to shape the outing around whoever is visiting.
Travel writers frequently recommend Davis Bayou precisely because it offers such a contrast to downtown. You can spend the morning browsing shops and eating lunch on Government Street, then be surrounded by marsh, woods, and water a short drive later. For visiting family and friends, seeing both sides of Ocean Springs—the creative little town and the coastal landscape around it—makes the destination feel much more complete.
The Best Visits Leave Room to Wander
When people you care about come to Ocean Springs, you do not have to fill every hour to show them a good time. Pick a few experiences that reveal different sides of the city. Taste your way through downtown. Introduce them to Walter Anderson. Walk along the water. Bring them somewhere handmade, historic, or wild.
Then leave a little room for the unexpected stop—the shop someone notices from the sidewalk, the extra round of drinks, or the sunset that convinces everyone to stay at the beach another half hour. Those unscheduled moments are often the ones that make visiting family and friends understand why you love Ocean Springs in the first place.
Also check out the best time to visit Ocean Springs, the many art galleries of Ocean Springs, or the beaches of Ocean Springs.