My Mardi Gras weekend in New Orleans, or NOLA as it's known, was one hell of a good time. In most of Louisiana, Mardi Gras is a five day long celebration ending from Friday until midnight on "Fat Tuesday", although there is a Mardi Gras season which lasts much longer. LSU even has a holiday to coincide with it, because if they didn't I'm sure class attendance would drop to virtually zero. People flock to New Orleans from all over the world to experience the legendary party atmosphere and the city was totally packed the whole time I was there.
The basic premise of Mardi Gras is that there are parades every day and evening consisting of giant, colourfully decorated floats interspersed with high school marching bands, dancers, and other performers. People ride on the floats and throw plastic beads and other trinkets (plastic coins, spears, cups, hula hoops, face masks, soft toys, and toilet paper...?) to the crowds lining the street where is everyone is screaming for beads with their hands in the air. Often so many beads and other stuff are being thrown you are lucky if some don't hit you in the face at some point. Some of the beads are large and heavy and I even saw one guy get hit in the head hard enough to draw blood.
For my Mardi Gras experience, a bunch of international students had decided to rent a house for three nights (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) about 15 minutes from downtown NOLA. The house was designed to sleep 15 people, but we got a little carried away with lowering the cost ($4000 to rent it for three nights) and ended up with 40+ people staying there each night. Friends from last semester came back to party from as far and wide as North Carolina and Belgium! The result was pure chaos at times with bodies sprawled all over the place on couches and air mattresses each morning. Plenty of fun but very little sleep was had by all as we checked out different parades, ate traditional southern food, and enjoyed ourselves at the many bars of downtown New Orleans.
Check out a few photos which sum up my experience - I'd definitely recommend a trip to Mardi Gras sometime in your life!
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| A local parade participant jumped into my photo out of nowhere! |
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| New Orleans Superdome all lit up |
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| Bourbon Street |
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| The sweet house we stayed in |
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| The locals really get into it |
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| Krewe of Tucks parade |
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| Throw us some beads! |
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| Reggae and fireworks - a nice combo |
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| Krewe of Proteus parade |
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| Krewe of Orpheus parade - the floats were great |
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| Orpheus again |
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| You end up with a lot of beads... |
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