Day 4: Mardi Gras

We woke up this morning to a large parade going on outside the hotel. As we walked along the street we were interrupted by another small parade of a bunch of old guys dressed in white and musicians giving out gold beads. Apparently they were called the “Half-fast Walking Club” whose name was toned down from the original “Half-Assed Walking Club” name.

Next we crossed the street to see the “Zulu” parade. Everyone on the floats was dressed up in African garb and was wearing facepaint and throwing coconuts, feathery spears, and beads into the crowd. Katie had been eyeing these plushie roses for a while, and managed to grab one luckily. The big colours for this parade were black and gold.

One of the funniest things was watching beads and bags of beads being thrown at people that weren’t paying attention. You hear, “Thwack!” and “Ohhhhh” as the crowd sympathizes with someone who just got a bag of beads in the head. Some of those prizes get thrown pretty hard!

After more beads, it was lunch time, and time to compare a gumbo with a jambalaya. They are actually similar it seems. They both had rice, sausage, chicken, etc, but the jambalaya seemed to be way more tomato-y while the gumbo had a more green pepper-ish tinge to it and was saltier. Both were great.

We wandered out in time to see “Rex” the king of Carnival just in time. This was the main parade for the week.

During the afternoon and evening we traveled more down Bourbon Street, which at this time was wall to wall people. It was hard to get anywhere. We spent a lot of time at Pat O’Brien’s in their heated courtyard drinking hurricanes and met some new people including a green power ranger and a giant chicken. We had more tasty jambalaya and drinks.

We watched some girl get taken off by the police for flashing a balcony. I guess if you are going to do that sort of thing, don’t do it 10 feet in front of a group of like 7 policemen, haha. We also saw a guy nail a girl in the face at point blank with a Frisbee. He was very sorry, but the policemen made him take a time out. As extra punishment, the policeman encouraged others to take his picture and put it on facebook.

At O’Brien’s later, the green power ranger offered to let Stew try it on, but Stew’s glasses fell off and we searched for about 10 minutes for them. They were a bit scratched and stomped on by the time we found them, but still wearable. Poor Stew! The power ranger guy was really sorry.

It turns out Katie is a really good crowd navigator. She could push through any crowd and was moving at least twice the speed everyone else trying to navigate the crowd was moving at.

At midnight, everyone was ushered off Bourbon Street by the police. (this happens every year apparently). The police were in formation a few minutes earlier and then when the clock struck midnight they started marching and shouted that Mardi Gras was over. The streets emptied immediately. Crazy!