Day 2 Mardi Gras New Orleans March 2 2019

    Yesterday started out with breakfast at I Hop. They had a special Mardi Gras menu with only a few selected items double the usual price. I couldn’t order my favorite country fried steak, but that was okay. Came back to the hotel and took a Pedi cab to our Bourbon St. Balcony Party. The party was from 11:00 to 5:00 with a full Cajun buffet and premium open bar. I, of course, visited it almost constantly. Tom had staked out a spot on the rail, so I brought him different items now and then. He was in hog heaven taking photos of the people below. We also had hundreds of bead necklaces to throw. I wasn’t too sure about throwing necklaces, but it turned out to be tons of fun. And our tour guide kept bringing me more. People wanted you to throw, so we did, if our aim and their catch were bad, the beads broke. No problem they were just left on the street. Street cleaning in New Orleans during Mardi Gras is a major business. We walked back to the hotel to experience walking Bourbon St during Mardi Gras. That too was fun.

   The Endymion parade was at night, and it went right in front of our hotel. First we thought we would watch from our hotel room window overlooking Canal Street, but then decided to join the crowd and watch from the street. Glad we did, not for the parade, but mingling with all of the people. So far everyone we have met has been here just for fun. We met a woman who was retired military. She was from Georgia and here with her extended family. Her sister was a New Orleans native and had bought 10 pounds of crayfish. Now these ladies and later the entire extended family knew how to eat them. They sucked the heads out first and then ate the tails.  They kept offering us some but we declined. She also had a cooler filled with a complete stocked bar, other coolers filled with wine and you name the goodies, she had it. She kept offering us whatever we wanted. It was fun to see how gracious people can be. One of the family members was a lawyer working on becoming a judge and everyone was told, “Do not take any photos of her and post them on Facebook even though it was all good stuff we were doing, “No Facebook.” We met another New Orleans couple and she was in the dog parade, so we heard all about that. Another couple was from Seattle and one from Australia. The only incident that we saw was a homeless man who took a woman’s beer out of her hands, but she beat the crap out of him. Good for her. After a two hour wait we decided we would watch from our room, after all we had bought wine ourselves. The parade had huge floats. One that was eight cars long and carried 250 people. The deal watching the parade is to see how many beads and other trinkets you can catch. By the end of the parade you could no longer see the street for all of the debris. As I said street cleaning is amazing. This morning all the trash is gone.

   Our hotel is wonderful and just had a much better breakfast than yesterday, cleaner too. The hotel elevator has a rug which says “Play Naughty,” and on your bed the runner says, “Sleep Saintly.” The hotel has a 6 ft  Rent a Fence surrounding  it. We asked the bartender about the fence, and he told us the hotel does that every year because people were leaning on the windows and breaking them. This way the people stay safe and the hotel doesn’t have to replace expensive windows. We have to use the side entrance. We wear rubber wrist bands and show them every time we enter the hotel. This keeps people from coming in to use the hotel bathrooms.

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Tom & Holly