Mardi Gras recap #2

Hello all! I started my New Orleans trip recap yesterday during WIAW, but I am here to finish. If you missed the first part, read here.

On Saturday afternoon, we were exhausted (and a little over heated) but mid afternoon. We decided a nap was in order! After napping and cleaning up, we changed clothes and headed out for Endymion, which is a huge parade on Saturday night.

 
One of our friends was fortunate enough to manage a building downtown on Canal Street, which had a fenced in plaza. This meant we had reserved parking and a HUGE empty plaza on the corner to enjoy the parade from.

Our pretty view!

If you have ever been to mardi gras, you know this is awesome. The whole this is messy and crowded, so having open space to watch the parade is seriously amazing. I was also pleased to have access to a nice bathroom :P (can I get an Amen??)

We brought chairs, drinks, and snacks for the main event. We sat outside for the parade from about 5pm-10pm, enjoying watching the crowd and crazy floats. The krewes on the floats seemed to think that throwing things into our plaza was a fun challenge, so we got bags and bags of beads, cups, etc.

After the parade ended, we waited for traffic to clear out and thought about dinner. Fyi, NOLA needs to step up the late-night eating scene. Lots of drink available, little food. We walked around downtown to Bourbon Street and the group asked if I wanted to go down. I was the only mardi gras newbie and totally appalled by the smell, trash, and push of people. I love Bourbon on a regular weekend, but this was too much. I said I'd pass, haha.

We grabbed some dinner and headed home for a much needed shower and bed time.

On Sunday, AR and I headed out on out own for breakfast. Due to parades, we had to walk to brunch and stumbled upon Surrey's on Magazine Street.

What Luck!! This place had excellent coffee, a vegan/vegetarian menu, and little wait. I enjoyed a balsamic-roasted veggie omelet with wheat toast and coffee while AR got biscuits and gravy.

We headed out for more festivities throughout the afternoon and could not stop marveling at the sunshine. Tank tops and flip flops? Heck yes. Towards late evening, we headed out to meet AR's mom for a yummy dinner and share out adventures from the weekend.

Have you been to Mardi Gras? What did you think?

 

x0x0,

Hannah