Finally…Mardi Gras!

I’ve been teasing you long enough. We were actually still in New Orleans for Mardi Gras and yes we loved it. Had a superb day which started off with my taking the photo mentioned in my previous post. Please check it out if you have’t read it yet.

Pre-dawn photo walk

After I took that pic I walked around some of the same streets I had walked through the day before and a few others. First I hit St. Charles Street where the parades were scheduled for later in the day. At the corner of Julia Street and St. Charles, there were hundreds of people who had camped out overnight to save their places. Many had tents, sleeping bags and a few had charcoal grilles fired up and cooking breakfast. I watched an awesome sunrise and captured a lot of it. I will let the photos speak for the actual photo walk and be back with more narrative after the photos (with captions).

Immediately after my favorite image I posted last. See what a HUGE difference not having the cab driver for a focal point makes?

It does. It really does.

The remains of Lundy Gras

Bourbon Street in all its “glory?”

Things get cleaned up pretty quickly

Dawn is breaking and these guys are finishing their night watching the start of Mardi Gras.

Ferry across the Mississippi

First real light.

Dawn turns this river side building pink.

Three sunrise pics for you—one.

Two

Three

And who better to start Mardi Gras with than the Flintstone family.

Later that day…

After my photo walk I headed back to the ship to shower, eat and convince Kathleen to come to a parade with me. Eventually she and I along with Bob, Judy & Mike walked up Julia Street to St. Charles Avenue to watch what we thought was the start of the Krewe of Rex parade. King Rex’s Krewe hosts the final parade before the end of Mardi Gras. Turns out the Krewe of Zulu’s parade (that preceded Rex) was a little late getting started and that put Rex a whole bunch late getting going. We stayed and watched a bunch of Zulu floats go by. The crowds were about 20 people deep going back from St. Charles Street and in that mess were some truly unusual and fun people watching the parade and celebrating Mardi Gras in a real New Orleans fashion.

Even dads pushing strollers are into Mardi Gras

At the Zulu parade. Check out the length of this float.

The theme for this parade was movies.

The crowd goes nuts begging for beads and more.

This float is still going. It was huge. Stretched the complete width of Julia Street.

They are crazy long. And this year due to some accidents, they banned tandem floats which would have made them even longer.

Here comes the next float—Pirates

And then the king of New Orleans, Louis Armstrong

Loved this float

It was another long one

Parents came up with great ways to get their kids above the crowds to watch the parades.

Here comes Buzz Lightyear and another very cool float.

I love his style.

This guy did NOT want to rely on public bathrooms so he brought his own.

Even grandmas dress up for Mardi Gras.

No one said all costumes were good looking.

After we watched the Zulu Krewe parade for a while, we headed back to the ship, got some lunch and around 4:00 pm Mike and I walked back out to get some authentic cajun gumbo for me and jambalaya for Mike. We both just had a small bowl because we still had dinner with our friends later that evening back onboard.

After we got back aboard but before we went to dinner I did a quick panorama of downtown New Orleans from the ship (it is below). Pay special attention to the skyscraper that is just to the right of center in the distance. (It is also the tallest building to the right.) When we did the HoHo bus tour it was another very sad building failure in the history of modern New Orleans. When we drove by the tower, all the bottom floor windows that were easy to see, were covered in plywood. It (The Plaza Tower) was built (according to our guide and the previously linked Wikipedia page) in 1964 and totally abandoned in 2002 due to a HUGE infestation of black mold. And even worse, it can’t be demolished because it is full of asbestos and imploding it would put a mile wide cloud of asbestos all over downtown New Orleans. So it sits there and probably will for a very long time. So sad. 

This finished up our time in New Orleans which brought us a ton of fun, lots of walking, parades, Krewes, beignets and so much more. We are very glad we visited during Mardi Gras and we truly loved the city and the people we met there.

Mardi Gras, the drinking, the partying—that scared me. —Archie Manning