Our morning began with greetings for Lundi Gras from one of my traveling companions, and the day proved to be a day full of celebration, despite the gray, cold weather. We began shopping for various items that we had not managed to gather during our excursion to the French Quarter. Our first stop was Fleurty Girl, a New Orleans souvenir shop where I picked up a drink mixer and some sarcastic socks. One of the young people in our group needed an explanation about the purpose of a button maker so we started a game of calling out all the snarky comments we heard that day for future buttons–or better yet–embroidery patterns at our new Etsy shop.
Then we headed off to a birthday celebration at R & O Restaurant, a fantastic family-style restaurant where I got my first taste of crawfish and gumbo. When we got there, a line had already started to form for the opening. All through our stay and as we left, every table was full and the line snaked outside the building. Not a surprise as the food was fantastic and filling.
Two more stops: the first to get King Cake, the second for muffuletta. I had bit into the baby the night before (and I did it again later that day), but I was not fast enough to pay for the cake that day. My friends beat me to it. Perhaps I’ll go back and get it the next time.
The second stop was for a huge muffuletta sandwich to nosh at the parades that evening. I suspect we picked this up at Nor-Joe Imports because our day had been centered around Metairie, but by this time I was definitely in passenger mode. The locals were the best guides–I just tried to keep up. I managed to pick up a voodoo doll there, which I discovered later came only with a black pin, which has made me reluctant to use it. (I’ve had a complicated relationship with karma, so I figured this one makes a better display item in my home if I can’t do anything positive with it.) My teenage companion was pretty disappointed in my choice and, from this point, took on the role of life coach, a void that really needed filling.
The women headed back to the hotel for a brief rest while the men headed to the grocery store for supplies. Because it was overcast and a little chilly, I suggested we figure out a way to make Irish coffee from our parade position, and the men executed flawlessly. All evening, we doctored the St. Stephen’s coffee with Baileys or Jamesons and cream to stave off the cold while we enjoyed two parades.
First up was Proteus, which is the oldest currently marching crewe in New Orleans. As such, it had traditional floats on old wagons, traditional costuming and design, and a mystery king. It started before dark that evening, and we joined the crowd of families to drank coffee, eat school food, and beg for trinkets and throws off the floats.
The second parade of the evening was Orpheus, which is the newest of the crewes, established in the 1990s by native son, Harry Connick, Jr. I first fell in love with Harry Connick, Jr. in college, and he has been singing to me for a few decades since. Unfortunately, he seemed not to recognize me as he rode by. Most of Orpheus happens after dark, but the floats are more high-tech and modern. It has a mixed-gender crewe and, sometimes, a reigning queen. Our year, Keegan-Michael Key presided as King.
I want to note here that, three parades in, my experience of Mardi Gras had been full of families and love, not drunken debauchery. Mixed into the families of children and parents were older people and folks with special needs, all included in the revelry. Floats showered their prizes on us all.
After the parades, we decided to head into the city without the teenagers. Our first stop was for New Orleans rockabilly in a bar whose name I never learned. We drank Hurricanes and watched some fall-down drunk, urine-soaked girls try to dance. At the break, we grabbed a taxi to the French Quarter to see the sites. On Bourbon Street, the drunken frat boys on balconies did not cat call us, and the folks on the street were other revelers like us (not the parade of sex workers I saw there when I had visited for Halloween a few years earlier). As Lundi Gras drew toward midnight, I ordered fireballs for the four of us to ring in Mardi Gras and we headed back to our hotel for the night in a taxi where we had an energetic and semi-buzzed discussion of how Catholic schools shaped our various characters.
It had been a great, celebratory day, full of good food, drink, music, people, and celebration. Happy Lundi Gras.