Church on Sunday morning re-united us with good friends and a great congregation on campus. It was a great experiment – and I was even thrown back into some of my old duties of singing and lecturing for the Mass. Some things never change, I suppose!
We headed out in the early afternoon to stake out a spot for optimal parade viewing for Sunday – which would bring two or three minor parades and two Super Krewes (Bacchus and Endymion). However, we soon found out space was truly limited, and the crowds were tremendous! We found about three square feet of open space in the neutral ground and set up camp for the day. Everyone in our group agreed it was the largest non-Fat Tuesday crowd we’d ever experienced at Mardi Gras. Multitudes of both families and college students lined the parade route on a gorgeous sunny day – truly amazing. We surmised that it was mostly locals and students traveling from Baton Rouge (we were surrounded by LSU students), combined with “ex-patriots” coming home like us. The day without a hitch, save for a few delays (as per usual) in the big parades. We even had friends nearby with a bathroom to use. And, access to bathrooms are like gold during Mardi Gras – very rare and very valuable. Normally, the city provides banks of port-a-potties along the parade route, but that was not the case this year, making finding a bathroom even more challenging than usual. The parades were beautiful, but unfortunately, I didn’t get too many good pictures of them – here’s what we got, though:
Monday we slept in and then had lunch with good friends. It was another experience in under-staffed post-Katrina NOLA, but a great time with old friends. That evening, Beka’s birthday, we had a fancy night ahead at well-renowned Arnaud’s restaurant, which would give us our first glimpse of the French Quarter as Arnaud’s is on Bourbon Street. It was relatively early by French Quarter standards while we were there (and parades were still rolling, so the crowds hadn’t made their way down) but it was still pretty full and seemed as raucous as ever. I even caught a glimpse of the Captain himself! We rounded out Monday evening by catching the end of the Orpheus parade and getting some free parking at Harrah’s… :) OK, not actually free, but fun anyway.
