Mardi Gras in New Orleans

A couple of our friends moved to Birmingham, Alabama so we decided to road trip down there to visit them. They even got off work early on Friday because there was a whopping one inch of snow coming! On Saturday, we all drove down to New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras (the weekend before actual Fat Tuesday). It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but it was pretty exciting. We liked exploring the French Quarter on Sunday away from all of the mayhem. I spliced together some video footage taken with my point-and-shoot camera. Enjoy!

Some things I learned about the Mardi Gras traditions:

-you eat King Cakes. There is a plastic baby hidden in the cake (symbolizing the Christ Child) and the one who gets that piece is to provide next year's cake (we did not find the baby in either of our cakes...).

- green, purple, and gold are the Mardi Gras colors (representing justice, faith, and power)

- if you stand along the parade routes, masked people on floats will throw you beads, glow sticks, and other trinkets...and you'll have to fight the crowds to get these "throws"

- although it is not considered a Mardi Gras tradition, the "flashing" for beads and drunken dibochary can be found on Bourbon Street (not a family-friendly place during Mardi Gras)

Our Photos