Mardi Gras Part Deux - Getting Fat on Fat Tuesday

When I finished last time we had just attended the parade on the northshore (Eve). That was on a Friday night. We then had got into the parade spirit, so headed across the lake on Sunday night and saw two parades, Sparta & Pegasus. We were joined at the parade by our friends Beachy and the Basketball Fanatic Guy (BFG).

Both parades followed the same route, from the garden district and through uptown. We decided to plonk ourselves on St. Charles avenue, but were having trouble deciding exactly where. Then we came across a bar selling buckets of beer, which also had banned ladders from being placed in front of it. Perfect! No viewing obstructions and a continual supply of beer from behind us. And thanks to the BFG driving, we were able to drink heavily.

The first parade paid off with lots of beads, and best of all a soft football. So the Aussies did what any true Aussies would do in the break between parades - with beer in hand we ran into the street and kicked the football for half an hour.

Major score from the Pegasus parade was a package containing 5 soft Pegasuses (Pegasi?), which the puppy was especially happy to find. Again we were slack and didn't take any photos, we were busy watching the parade. But there are lots coming later in the post, I promise. After the parade we headed down to the quarter and found a hole in the wall bar that was able to serve us Muffelatas and beer, so ended the night well.

The next week passed mostly uneventfully, with only Friday afternoon spent doing the Mardi Gras thing (drinking and eating seafood). On the Saturday before Fat Tuesday we again went down to NO to see a parade. This was Endymion, which is one of the most famous parades of the festival. We got our now favourite position in front of the bar with no ladders and again scored big on beads and freebies.

We were just about over parades by this stage, so again didn't take any photos and actually left a bit early after the floats broke down around the corner.

The question remains, what do you do with all these beads that you catch?

Gator Girl stressing over another bagfull of beads.

Yeah they look good, but what to do?

You could torment the dog.........

And then we come to the final day of Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday. This is a public holiday in the state of Louisiana, and people take it very seriously. Gator Girl was off working in some god forsaken state (possibly one of the Carolinas) for the day, and so missed the best day of Mardi Gras. Don't tell her that though.

As you've probably guessed by now, taking photos is not our strong point. So pretty much all the photos shown today were taken by Beachy - thanks for letting me use them!

I hooked up with Beachy, the BFG and some locals and headed down to the quarter about 7am.
We started the day in traditional fashion with coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde in the corner of Jackson square. While we were there we started to see the sights of the day we would later get used to.
First the lame duck president orchestra strolled past.

Then we ran into a very well dressed man.

Do you get it? Do you get it? Pigs in a blanket and a chick magnet.

We wandered up the road at about 8am for the other traditional way to start the day in New Orleans - Bloody Mary's at Pat O'Briens. Very tasty way to wash down the beignets.

I should probably point out that I had invites to two functions on this day. One was at the Acme oyster house on a side-street from Bourbon St, the other was a balcony at the Royal Sonesta hotel overlooking Bourbon St. The second one is apparently a prize position that most people don't get the chance to attend. I just thought it was fun and didn't realise how lucky I apparently was. More on that later.

So we went to the first function at the oyster house and found everything was free. All the food you could eat, all the alcohol including spirits you could drink was free. And it all came in go-cups so that you could take it out walking on the streets. I was just starting to realise how much fun this day could be :-). So I washed down the Bloody Mary with some gumbo, jambalaya, shrimp and beer while standing on the balcony.

After a couple more heart starters we then headed out on the streets to look at some of the great costumes that were appearing.A reveller on Royal Street.

Now I'm normally not a mime fan, but this guy walking his dog very slowly was cool. Check the signs in the background as well - these are not special for the occasion, you see them all the time in Nawlins.

You would quite frequently come across extra unannounced parades going through the streets. These guys were just strolling around with a band behind them, handing out beads.


And here's the band.

By this stage I was feeling underdressed, so dived into a tourist shop and bought myself a mask. Here's how I looked, standing behind Beachy and a couple of other locals.

Nice codpiece.

I wish I could say the same for this guy......but there's something missing.

The party on the streets was beginning to fire up about 11am.

And people started to wear less and less.....

But the best way to get in the spirit was to meet the locals - as the BFG discovered.

It's hard to tell who the king and queen of Mardi Gras was, but these guys gave both titles a shot.


The costumes ranged from the simple and inventive.....

....to the elaborate and impressive.....


......to the downright odd.

Oh, hang on, time for another parade.

No comment.


These guys were probably the winner for most visually stunning costume, they looked great.


I've been trying to figure out what kind of superpower the guy on the right must have.

Time for another brass band randomly walking the streets.

These guys were lowering beads to people from their third floor apartment via fishing rod - very inventive.

After walking the streets for a while we went back to the oyster house for some beers and another round of deep fried goodness. I then decided to use my other freebie and headed to the balcony above Bourbon Street. By this time the street was getting packed and the party was well and truly started.

And now I can answer the question - what do you do with all those beads? I don't know what the locals do, but I took a huge bag of beads that we'd caught previously up to the balcony and threw them out to someone else. I'll probably get them back again someday.


Here's the view from the balcony looking north down Bourbon Street. You can see the beads being thrown to some lucky punter. And a bit of my finger, as I'm bad at photography.


This is the usual sight from the balcony. 5 or 6 people shouting for beads, and a bunch of people too drunk to look upwards.


And here's the view looking south down Bourbon Street (and a bit more of my finger). This is now getting later in the afternoon, and it continued to get more and more packed on the street from then onwards. We left about 5pm, but the party continues until exactly 12pm. At that time the party stops completely, and the police clear the streets of rubbish and revellers with fire hoses.

Why 12 exactly? Don't forget the first part of this post - it's a religious ceremony and Lent begins on the Wednesday, technically at 1 minute past 12. So the party's over.

Not many people made it into work early on the Wednesday though........

Mardi Gras was a great experience, and I'm really looking forward to it again next year. It wasn't what I expected, but it was lots of fun and had a much more family friendly atmosphere than I had expected. Even on the streets on Fat Tuesday the feeling was more 'fun' than 'drunken party'. Anyone want to come visit for next year?

Mardi Gras Part 1 - A religious experience?

Gator Girl is off touring the US again this week, so I'm alone with the little puppy for company. So I think it's about time I quit procrastinating and blogged again.

The major thing that's happened in the last month was Mardi Gras. Until I arrived in Louisiana they only thing I knew about Mardi Gras was what I'd seen on tv from the Sydney festival, and some blurred memories from our own Mardi Gras party in Perth. It turns out that about the only thing we had right was the beads.

Mardi Gras is a religious festival, and a very Catholic one at that. The roots come from the celebrations prior to Lent, starting from Twelfth Night and finishes on Fat Tuesday. Those of you with a Catholic background might recognise Fat Tuesday as Shrove Tuesday, or pancake day.

Mardi Gras really gets going in the two weeks before Fat Tuesday, and is mostly made up of parade after parade after parade. These parades are run by social groups called "Krewes", and are mostly very family friendly. They generally consist of:
- People in masks on a float throwing beads, cups, doubloons, and if you're really lucky, a soft toy
- Followed by a marching band
- Followed by people carrying torches
- Followed by people on a float throwing beads, cups, doubloons & toys....

...and repeat....and repeat....and repeat....

You can tell the locals as they are well prepared for the windfall, and bring large bags along so that they can carry all the loot home. You could try and carry all the beads around your neck, but you'd end up hunched over like me after two hours riding a mountain bike.

The locals also stake out the good places several hours prior to the parades, often with 'parade ladders'. Parade ladders are a normal ladder with a wooden box nailed to the top for kids to sit in. When kids are up this high they present a good target for the people on the floats to aim at, meaning the kids are more likely to score a lot of toys.

There's a couple of exceptions to the family friendly nature of the festival, but I'll talk about them later.

You can tell it's getting near Mardi Gras season when king cakes start appearing in the office. These are coffee cakes that are smothered in cinnamon and sugar, and decorated with purple, green and gold beads. In each cake there is a plastic child (symbols again!), and whoever got the piece of cake with the child in it is supposed to buy the next cake. In reality, or at least in our office, people would stick the child back in the cake when no-one was looking; as the baby was in the last piece a suspicious amount of times.

Ok, enough intro, onto some pictures and stories of what we did. We went to a total of 5 parades over the course of the week, and also down to the quarter a couple of times for the proper experience.

About three weeks before Mardi Gras we went to our first parade, which was the "Krewe Du Vieux" parade. This is one of the less family friendly parades; and its stated mission is to "preserve the Mardi Gras parade as a venue for individual creative expression and satirical comment". Ie: it isn't afraid to offensive and politically incorrect. We loved it.

The parade is pretty much the only one that has hand- or mule-drawn carts and still goes through the french quarter. There also weren't any barriers to prevent people getting in close to the action, so there was a lot of push and shove to get as close as possible and score the beads. It also got pretty interesting when a larger float came along, as they had to push the crowd back to try and squeeze through.

My personal favourite float was the 'bring back Edwin Edwards' float, which had Edwards in a cell on the back of the float handing out Mardi Gras money for his re-election. And given that we just re-elected a politician who made the 'top 10 most corrupt officials' list last year, and had $100,000 in cash found in his freezer by police, surely even Edwards couldn't be that bad.....

Another high point was watching the brass bands try to march and play when the crowd was pressing in on them. It's ok for the saxophone players, but watching a trombone trying to hit a low note in a crowd and not whack someone in the head was pretty amusing.

Unfortunately we didn't take a camera with us, so you'll just have to follow the link below to see some of the parade pictures from the official website

The official site also has some nifty stuff about the history of the Krewe, and for those of you who can't be bothered following the link, I'll quote my favourite bit of it here.

".......the Krewe grew from about 150 drunks stumbling through the French Quarter in search of a bar, to become a relatively well-organized group of about 600 (most of them still drunk), with an actual parade route."

The week after that there was a parade on the Friday night nearby to where we live. Given how close it was, we decided to grab some dinner, a bottle of wine, a fluffy puppy and a picnic rug and enjoy the show from the median strip. And look, I've finally got a picture of something!


Gator Girl and the puppy relaxed on the median strip.

Swamp Boy doing his third favourite thing.

What is with those eyes?
Check out the RV in the background - for several days before the parade, RV's just started parking along the route to get the best possible position for the parade. It also means families can put the kids to sleep if the parade goes too late. The things in front are the parade ladders I was talking about before, where kids sit and get beads thrown at them.

Before the parades start lots of these guys wander the route selling beads, toys, flags, masks and all sorts of other goodies, generally off a converted shopping trolley. I'm not sure how successful that would be, as all you have to do is wait a couple of hours and equivalent goodies will get thrown at your head.

On to the parade itself. As you can see, there were hundred of people out on the street at parade time. This is a rare sight in these southern states - people walking! Always worth a photo.
There were pretty hossies.....

Two storey parade floats, impressively decorated with masked people hurling trinkets.
And the first words of any Nawlins child is normally "throw me something mister". I particularly like that the kid already has his hands filled with toys, and is still trying for more.

We ran out of alcohol about half-way through the parade, but this is Southern Louisiana, this isn't going to be a problem. We got chatting to the RV owners across the road from us, and they started us on a beer lifeline. This is something we come across all the time down here, people are incredibly friendly and open with complete strangers, and happy to share anything they have with others.

Our friendly locals, but we were a few sheets to the wind by this stage and I don't remember their names.

The haul from about half-way through the parade. So the real question is what do you do with all those beads? The answers will be shared next week when the story of our Mardi Gras continues. Stay tuned for:

Mardi Gras Part 2: Getting fat on Fat Tuesday (and I promise to get more pictures in the next one).

Gator Girl & Lady McBec's Big Apple Adventure

Swamp Boy has headed away for a couple of days, so I have taken over the blog (please even note its new look - he is just lucky it is not bright pink.... I thought it best to keep him on side as he will have to help me restore the links to our friends pages that seem to have.... um... disappeared with my upgrade!) and am finally getting up to date with some of my recent adventures.

Lady McBec decided she was heading to the 'Old Country' on the traditional Australian young adult right of passage known as the 'working holiday'. On the way, she decided to grace us with her presence. She visited Fitness Boy (Her name for him and well, I can't think of anything better to call my little Bro' at this stage) and his lovely wife in Aggie Land. She then had NYC in her sights. As I am always up for an adventure and have plenty of holiday time up my sleeve, I joined her for the fun.

We had a fabulous time. I flew in late on Monday night from the Swamp and found that Lady Mc had already hit the 5th Ave shops without me! Alas, there would be plenty of time to shop after we had seen the sights. As we had organised a 2 day hop-on-hop-off bus pass (complete with tour guide), and Tuesday was sunny so we headed off to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The sun may have been out, but it was absolutely freezing. Sitting on the top deck of the bus had chilled us both to the core (the picture was from early in the day when Lady Mc was still glamorous)!

As a result we didn't get off the boat to visit Lady Liberty, but we did manage about 50 photos each on our way past. But of course, you have all seen pictures of the NYC sites, so am not bothering to upload my swag of tourist shots. I will include one taken at the top of the Empire State Building, only as it shows the snow that had not yet melted!

After the ferry ride, it was time to do a quick wander through the shops, so we could make an informed decision as to where to spend our money on our designated shopping day (Thursday). We found our store on 5th Ave and marked it off on our map for Thursday afternoon as a must see. But we have do discuss Wednesday first!

A work colleague from New Jersey told me about a booth where you get 1/2 price Broadway tickets, so that was our first stop on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately they were all matinee shows, so we needed to head back after 3.00 pm. So what better way to spend the morning than on a bus touring Queens. Highlight - the bus was warm and provided Lady MacBec the perfect place to nap. Once we returned from that misadventure (don't bother if you are in NYC), we walked 20 blocks through Central Park.

Now this was very worthwhile - it was lovely, despite the cold. Lady McBec provided the tour commentary, which all seemed to revolve around the squirrels that were in near plague proportions and their affairs. After a quick bit to eat, it was time to explore the Met. Lady McBec was in paradise and I am sure could have spent days wandering the halls.

But no time to dawdle. We had tickets to get for our show!

We managed to get Phantom of the Opera tickets for an 8.00pm show. Unfortunately we did not have time go back to our hotel and change or drop off our collectibles from the Met. But we did have time for dinner. We selected a very trendy looking Asian Fusion restaurant for dinner - full of trendy after work types in suits. Us - jeans, hiking boots and warm clothes, but none the less - the food was amazing and after a cosmopolitan, who cared! Oh yes, and the show was also terrific.

Thursday was shopping day and boy did we explore every shop on Madison Ave and 5th Ave. Mostly as it was really cold and we wanted to escape to the warm, but also because it was our designated shopping day. As we were both in thermals under our outer layers, there was specific criteria evaluated prior to trying on clothes. Was there more than one item worth trying? Did we really really like the item? I think by the end of the day we were exhausted and had spent all our money. It also left Lady McBec's back pack overflowing and required a trip to the post office to dispatch items back to Oz as well as the London.

After a farewell Cosmo on Friday, it was time to head to the airport and farewell Lady Mc on her big adventure. I hopped on my plane first, and should have been home in 4 hours. Unfortunately I missed a connecting flight and made it back to my swamp after a 15 hr delay in the Carolina's. Hmm. So Lady Mac made it to London well before I made it home.

(I also maintain half a Cosmo consumed at 12.30pm cannot make someone ill 10 hrs later Lady Mc!)

Again - another successful adventure.

Swamp Boy's Christmas Get Away

Being the fantastic wife I am, I came up with the 'perfect' Christmas gift for my husband. Possibly not the best idea in this our first year of marriage, as where do you go after you have given the best of the best? But that is an issue I will just have to deal with in April when it is Birthday time.

So what was this gift you ask?

Well, those of you that know Swamp Boy, know that he likes to live on the edge of his snowboard and with his head in the clouds. So the gift was obvious. A weekend in Vail, Colorado, at 13,000 feet and in the middle of winter. What more could he want. The weekend was beautifully timed to coincide with a work trip I needed to take to a location in the high plains north of Denver. We left on separate flights from New Orleans - Swamp Boy flying via Houston and me on a work paid direct flight.

Swamp Boy flying time = 7 hour including an hour delay. Gator Girl = 3 hours.

We picked up a four wheel drive hire car and hit the road after waiting an eternity for the snowboards to arrive (the airport in Denver actually has a dedicated ski/snowboard conveyor belt). Swamp Boy looked at me a little oddly when he realised the rental car was costing as much as the accommodation for the weekend. Did we really need a 4x4?

The answer to this question is a big YES! As we hit the outskirts of Denver it started snowing. And snowing, and then snowed some more. Visibility was down to about 50 metres, the windscreen wipers were going as fast as I could get them and we crawled along the highway at about 35 miles an hour (in a 75 mile/hr zone). This drive takes you over the US continental divide, so it gets pretty high and treacherous. Finally we made it over the Vail summit and into Vail village and would you believe - it stopped snowing. The concierge at the hotel let us know that they were in desperate need of snow as they had not had any for about 8 days (the rest of Colorado shut down during that time due to snow storms!). What to do? Would we have snow?

Of course we would. We awoke Friday morning to find 6 inches of powder. We were in heaven! Swamp Boy ripped up the back bowls, while an early somersault did me in and ensured a long lunch. The day was so big, that for the first time in his life Swamp Boy actually turned down Apres ski and headed back to our room for a pre-dinner nap. That is usually my domain!

On Saturday morning there was no more snow, but Friday's snow had been beautifully groomed and I was in my element. What a day. Magical sunshine in the morning and clouds and lots of wind to scare the less hard core enthusiasts away in the afternoon. Swamp Boy was in fine form and once again ripped it up! This time his exhaustion was so adrenaline filled, beer was a must before we headed out for a German style dinner in Alps style chalet. Nothing like schnapps and apple strudel for dessert while reminiscing about previous adventures with friends in the snow!

That was all the boarding we got in, as due to high winds we headed home early on Sunday morning. After Swamp Boy dug the car out of course (it had turned to ice and was very hard going). On Sunday an avalanche across a road took out 4 cars on a pass about 50 miles from where we were. No one died, but it was pretty scary. I have put one of our snaps from our drive below. Again - a long slow trip home - don't let the sun deceive you, the wind and the snow blowing across the road were hellish.

It was however a sensational weekend.

Washington D.C (Delayed Critique)

Before Christmas Gator Girl and myself managed to get up to Washington, DC for a long weekend. However with the house move and Christmas, I didn't get around to posting some pictures from the trip - hence the title above.

We'd heard a rumour that Gator Girl's bridesmaid, Aussie Bruce, would be passing through her parents place in Washington on a world wide rock star tour. So we thought we'd take the opportunity to check out the monuments on the Saturday and Sunday, and spend the Monday with Bruce and her family

Gator Girl left it up to me to organise the hotel, which is either an excellent or terrible idea depending on whether I'm feeling lavish on the day I book. Luckily for her, I was feeling rich and booked a beautiful hotel in downtown Washington, right near the White House.

We arrived late Friday night into the Reagan airport, flying just past the Pentagon and directly at the white house..... By the time we got to our hotel, we only had a short period of time to check out the skyline. We took lots of pictures of the impressively lit city, but the only one which came out well was the cheese stick (also known as the Washington monument).


Washington is very pretty, very clean city. It's also the first city which seems to be designed for people, rather than cars. There's actually crosswalks with pedestrian lights, which would be a massive step forward for most of the southern cities we've been in so far. It's also set out very well, with wide streets designed so that you can see monuments in the distance. For example, from the white house you can see the capitol (basically parliament) building and the washington monument, from the monument you can see the capitol, white house and the reflecting pool leading up to the giant Abe (picture of that lower down). And between all of these areas were large expanses of grass where people seem free to just hang out. I haven't seen so much public space since I came to the US, and the city is much the better for it.

Standing betweent the Washington monument with the capitol building in the background. To the right is one of the funkier looking buildings that makes up the Smithsonian museum. The Smithsonian is not, as I thought, just a single building, but an entire neighbourhood of museums, each building dedicated to a different historical aspect. More on that later.


This picture is taken from the same spot, looking back the other way towards the cheese stick. By the way, although the day looks very sunny, the massive thick coat that Gator Girl is wearing should give you a good hint that it was pretty chilly out there. However given it was the middle of winter, this is probably to be expected.


This is taken from the opposite side of the stick, looking across the reflecting pool back towards the stick. Directly at our back is the giant Abe. These three pics are all in a direct line, I think showing pretty well the wide, grassy nature of the city. Purty.

Pretty much every US president seems to have some kind of monument, and how good they were as a president appears to be related to how big the monument is. So you can see Washington's from everywhere, Lincoln's & Jefferson's from a lot of the city, whereas I didn't see Bush's or Reagan's anywhere. Probably the most impressive was Lincoln's, which was made up of a giant Abe statue with his famous speeches on either wall. I think the three pics above give it the right epic scale.

The final thing we did at the end of the Saturday was go up the cheese stick and take some shots of the city, which are worth sharing. They told us lots of reasons why the cheese stick is the largest something something of it's type, but I wasn't really interested so stuck to taking photos of the scenery. I mean, come on, if it's not the largest building around, just get over it and stop trying to make it the 'biggest' something.

The first picture looks south towards the Potomac river. The big white building on the side of the lake is the Jefferson memorial (I think, I lose track of all the memorials occasionally).







The second picture is looking east towards the Capitol. Pretty much all the buildings on either side of the grassed area are part of the Smithsonian.






The picture on the left shows the view to the west, looking across the reflecting pool to the giant Abe statue. The fountains in the foreground are for the WW2 memorial.





The picture on the right is the view to the north, towards the White House. Again, check out all those cool large lawns.






On the Sunday we explored the Smithsonian. We spent a while at the national archives, which was a fairly patchy affair. The exhibit didn't really seem to have a theme, there were just bits of history scattered everywhere. However it was salvaged by the final exhibit, which was the declaration of independance, the constitution and the bill of rights. I was unable to get close enough to see if there was a hidden map on the declaration unfortuantely. The one thing that did strike me was the massive size of John Hancocks signature on all of there documents. He has signed his name about 3 times the size of anyone else. Obviously a man with some issues.

We then spent pretty much of the rest of the day in the air and space museum, and could have spent longer. They had exhibits and planes from the very beginning of flight, through to live feeds from the space station. Very cool......especially for a geek like myself.

On the Sunday night we went into Virginia and caught up with Aussie Bruce's parents. We had a great dinner, and the next morning we went to the riverside old suburb of Alexandria, which was very impressive. Again it was very pedestrian friendly, with lots of cobbled old streets and old shotgun houses.


Aussie Bruce with her temporarily borrowed dog (8 years and still counting). Check out the wonderful weather again, considering it was winter we couldn't ask for better.


Bruce's Mum, Bruce and Gator Girl on the streets on Alexandria. All the streets looked a lot like this - wide footpaths and old buildings.

And then unfortunately it was time to head back to Reagan airport and back down to Louisiana again. Overall we had a great weekend, and I recommend checking out Washington if you ever get the chance.