Mardi Gras

It orrured to me last night that I never actually told you all about my first Mardi Gras experience. Gah!! What was I thinking?? I have no idea how I managed such an oversight but I plan to rectify it immediately.

Um...Mardi Gras was nuts. I've never seen anything like it. I'm not even talking about the wild partying in the streets either--that I expected. I'm talking about the mentality that goes with it. I'm talking about how an entire city literally shuts down for two weeks to celebrate. I'm talking about an event where not only are gluttony and doing things to the extreme accepted...they're expected. And celebrated. Anywhere else in the world you'd probably attract a few stares if you were walking down the street at eight in the morning carrying a case of beer and wearing a pirate costume that you'd had on for three days. Here? Not so much. During Mardi Gras, I discovered, just about anything goes...

I'll skip over the parts about all the great food I ate and the fact that I may or may not have set some kind of record for King Cake consumption, the crazy partying (not by me so much as in general) and the general feeling of wild abandon that permeates the city and skip right to some pictures. These are all from Bacchus, which took place on Sunday night and was an absolute blast.


I told you the Bacchus theme this year was "Love is in the Air" so all of the floats were in some way love themed. Cute, no? My Uncle Nick rides in Bacchus every year and his float was called "Vegas Honeymoon." It was fantastic. All the riders were dressed up like Elvis, complete with big black hair pieces. Totally goofy and over the top, but that's what Mardi Gras is all about.





These were just a couple of my favorite floats. I took a picture of Drew Brees on the King's float but unfortaunately, it was a little too dark and didn't turn out very well. Sorry.



My cute date, right before we went into the ball.



To summarize it for you, this was one of the most fun weekends I've had since moving to New Orleans. I'm not gonna lie though, by the time Mardi Gras was over I was more than ready for a break. I was exhausted.