Well, it’s over! Carnival ended with a bang and I don’t know of anyone who didn’t have a great time. The weather was cold over most of the weekend nights but perfect during the day. Between last Friday and yesterday, we watched about 14 parades. Mostly, we watched the parades on St. Charles Avenue. The highlight for us was the Monday night Orpheus ball called the Orpheuscapade. We caught enough beads there to fill two large duffel bags.
My younger cousin had a friend visiting from New York City. It was his first trip to New Orleans and of course, Carnival. Todd was amazed by everything. After the ball, nearing 3:30 am, the rest of us headed to bed and Bob took Todd to the French Quarter. (I know that I just couldn’t go any more.) Todd had a lot to barter with because he caught some great beads. He only had one problem. He had so many beads and had put them on so hastily that they were tangled! He couldn’t get one set off with out pulling about six others. Since he didn’t want to part with so many at once, he didn’t get a chance to "see" as much.
Well after the sun came up, we went to Café Du Monde for café au lait and beignets. We strolled the Quarter and went to a friend’s apartment on Royal Street. It is the best location. The apartment is right behind St. Louis Cathedral and has one of most prized features of all – a BALCONY! It looks straight down Pirate’s Alley to Jackson Square. Royal runs parallel to Bourbon Street and is the next street over. There was lots of crowd over flow. I saw a whole lot more then I cared to see but nothing that was flat out disgusting. One of the most interesting characters that I saw was Abe Lincoln, complete with bullet wound, playing a ukulele. However, there was one thing that made me wonder. There was an artist painting women’s chests in all sorts designs. There was also a large group of men taking pictures both still and video. I wondered if these women show up in “Girl’s Gone Wild 25”, will they decide to sue too? Overall, I felt that the nudity was down a great deal.
If you have never come to Carnival before, you must put it on your “Things to do before I…” list.
Optimist Prime,
www.mglinks.com is a good site to use. In addition to some Krewe information, it has links to vendors to get all your carnival supplies.