Mardi Gras! Nola! Who Dat!

New Orleans is like no other place I've ever been! Patrick, Griff, Shannon, Steph and I were let out of work an hour early to rent a car and head to NOLA. The three hour car trip seemed like nothing due to our excitement. We dropped the boys off at the La Quinta downtown and the girls and I headed to Tim's house. Tim is a friend of mine I met at Rutgers who goes to Tulane Grad School for social work. A hilarious kid with heaps of stories, the best one about how he managed to hike up with Himalayas with malaria accompanied but a drug cartel and didn't know it.(ask if you would like to know more)The best part about Tim was hos hospitable he was.
He lived in a beautiful old fashioned New Orleans home with his girlfriend and one other roommate. It was a full house due to 2 other guests spending the month there who were also from Jersey/Philly. It sounds silly but there is something about the presence of other people from NJ that make me feel light and at home. We walked in to a Creole themed dinner party! Tim and Serena had made us a creole craw fish etouffee! It was delicious and exactly what we needed. After living in a church/braille school for the last 4 months, a home, with good friends, good food, and good wine(!) is the best thing any of us could have asked for.
That night Tim took us to this place called Blue Nile on Frenchman street. There was a great band playing. Their style could only be described as New Orleans own breed of music and it was fabulous.
Every now and then the singer would throw out there..."Who dem say gonna beat dem saints!", and then the crowd would scream, "who dat! who dat!"
This, "who dat" was incorporated into every song. I have never seen so much sports pride in my life. I guess after everything Louisiana has been through and the fact they they've never been to the Super Bowl really got the crowd going.

The next day we walked around the touristy and not so touristy areas. French quarter is amazing. All the architecture is Spanish which i didn't really understand but it was beyond beautiful. there is so much culture wrapped into this one little city. it is definitely someplace I could see myself living.
Later on we went to an our door art festival which made me miss embroidering and knitting and made me thrive to do something creative. We then got friend chicken and daquaris. This was a good choice.
Later on that night we headed to the first parade of Mardi Gras! For all of you that don't realize how big Mardi Gras is in Louisiana, you should know it is bigger than anything! Mardi Gras technically starts after Christmas and doest end until Fat Tuesday which is translated into Mardi Gras. This parade was called Krewe du Vieux. This is a sexual/political parade so it was very very interesting. Had alot of floats like this. Pretty X rated. This is NOT a parade for the kids.
Alot of the floats were very harsh and political. I guess New Orleans doesnt like the politics going on in their city and they were conveying this through the floats at the parade.
After the parade we floated around the city and had a great time doing so.
In the morning we got brunch and bloody marys and decided to head "home" to lake charles. All in all this was an amazing New Orleans experience and made me like the south just a tad bit more. : )
more pics to come!
cheers