What I Learned at Mardi Gras
1. Driving through the night is not very fun. The four of us were troopers though… drove non-stop and arrived in New Orleans around 6:30am (central time).
2. The bars don’t close. Ever. Upon our arrival into town at 6:30am we saw LOTS of people still out from the night before. Whoa.
3. It takes FOREVER for four girls to get ready in the morning when there is only one shower, one small mirror and one power outlet.
4. Speaking of showers-who needs a shower curtain when you can make one out of trash bags and scotch tape?
5. Most apartments in New Orleans don’t have heaters. Ours included. It was coooold.
6. You can walk into the French Quarter with multicolored Boas, glittery face stickers, beads and obnoxious sun glasses and no one even notices. Anything goes.
7. *IMPORTANT* You don’t have to show one inch of skin to earn those beads! The four of us came home with easily (not exaggerating) 100lbs of beads. None of us did anything scandalous to get them.
8. Nobody really knows why we needed that many beads, or what to do with them now that we are home.
9. Those beads are super heavy-we all have chiropractic appointments scheduled to realign our 
necks.
necks.
10. Getting on the very front row for the parades is a must. One will wait for hours to guarantee a front row seat.
11. People get feisty if you try in invade their front row seat.
12. Its bad luck to pick up beads once they have touched the ground. You MUST catch them as they are thrown to you.
13. The street are absolutely disgusting anyway…. Who wants the beads once they are on the street?
14. We all threw away the shoes that we had worn all weekend. They were ruined.
15. They sell alcohol in anything! (Fish bowls, hand grenades, etc.)
16. You can get a beer “to-go” in New Orleans. Whoa.
17. Bourbon street is a train wreck. I am scarred for life.
18. You can’t make a cell phone call in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Great service. Not enough cell tower availability.
19. Bathrooms are considered a privilege. Most restaurants/bars/street vendors required that you show a receipt before they would allow you to use their facilities/porta-potties.
20. Toilet paper might as well have been worth its weight in gold.
21. Most parade floats threw beads or candy at you. Others threw rolls of TP. You can’t imagine the fights that broke out for the chance to get your hands on the sacred TP!!
22. Beads HURT when they hit you in the face/hand/arm.
23. Bags of beads hurt even more.
24. The New Orleans police need to be paid so much more! They were everywhere. It was nice to know we were safe in such a disorderly crowd!!
25. There are still homes in Louisiana that have a spray-painted “X” on them from hurricane Katrina. Also, entire shopping centers and neighborhoods were abandoned and still remain so.
26. There is no evidence of hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter.
27. Cafe De Monde was as good as everyone said it would be.
28. The musicians playing on the street corners were incredible- one of my favorite things about New Orleans.
29. I am so glad that I was able to go to Mardi Gras and had an amazing time!
30. I never need to go back. =)
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February 27th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Looks like you had so much fun!! I am glad you got to go and it is funny to read your last comment about going back.