Sonya's Blog - Day 226 - Mardi Gras Parade

Sonya’s Blog - Day 225 - February 2nd - Mardi Gras Parade

We wanted to catch the shuttle downtown today, but we were not able to book ourselves on it as it was already full. We just spent the day hanging out and catching up on things that needed to be done. We are going to go to some Mardi Gras parades tonight. The first parade starts at 6:30 PM, but we want to be there a little early to find a spot to sit down. We packed up a supper to take with us to the parade.

There are two Mardi Gras parades tonight and we want to check them out and see what all the fuss is about. From everything that Blake has read, the closer the parade gets to the French Quarter the crazier it gets. For families it is best to catch the parade in the suburbs, near the start of the route. The routes are quite long and the parade can take 4 to 5 hours to complete the whole route. We decided to go to where the parade was starting and find a spot. We wanted to get there at least an hour before the parade started, but it took us quite awhile to navigate our way there. We found a place to park on the street that was about 1.5 KM’s from the parade route. We decided to walk the rest of the way, because we had a great spot and we didn’t know how busy it would be closer. We each grabbed a chair and walked the 20 blocks or so.

We managed to find a spot to set up our chairs pretty quickly, so that was a bonus. In the picture to the left you will see Isaac holding a sign. Blake had read that if you have a sign, you will get more stuff thrown your way. It was busy, but not crazy. The closer it gets to the weekend the bigger, busier and crazier the parades get. The parade ended up starting about 15 minutes early, so we were only in our chairs for about 15 minutes and then didn’t sit in them again. The first parade was The Druids. I thought the parades were all about the floats and the crazy costumes, which are great. The parades, for the viewers, is really about the stuff the Krewe is throwing off the floats. Each float has dozens of people on it and they throw stuff out to the crowds - like beaded necklaces (classic Mardi Gras fare), stuffed animals, frisbees, cups, etc. The necklaces are the most common item thrown out and soon we all had dozens of them. Some of the necklaces have extras on them that often tell you the name of the Krewe and the year. These are more coveted. When the parade has a delay, the floats get swarmed with people trying to get better stuff.

Isaac pretty happy with all his bling so far:

See the flowers in Blake's shirt. A troupe of dancing women came by and two of them walked up to him and gave him a flower for a kiss on the cheek. He was happy to oblige:

A little information about the floats. Each parade is run by a Krewe and has a name. It is very prestigious to be on a Krewe and some have waiting lists of people wanting to join. There are over 60 parades in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season, which runs from January 6th (Little Christmas, the end of the 12 days of Christmas when the Three Wise Men arrived with their gifts) to Shrove Tuesday. The closer you get to Mardi Gras the bigger the parades get and I assume the more prestigious.

The second parade starts right after the first parade, on the route we are on. The second parade was called Nyx and it was the newest Krewe to join in the fracas. They were 5 years old and their speciality was handmade purses. They threw lots of the same stuff as the Druids, but also some more girly stuff. Isaac caught a parasol, Natasha and I both caught some purses and Blake got a fancy travel mug. We had so much stuff at the end of the parade and we had to lug it back to the truck along with our chairs. We decided we would probably not bring chairs to a parade again, because we hardly used ours. Well we used them to put our stuff on. Here are some more pictures:

Isaac looking a litte camp with all his bling, so much!

Blake with his necklace collection at the end of the night:

My purse that I caught, so pretty:

The parades ended at about 9:30 (well for us, they still had hours to go before they got to the French Quarter) and we headed back. We were all tired, so after giving Kizmet a good walk we all went to bed.

Sonya