Pre-Mardi Gras in New Orleans

What do you do on your (almost) first day in New Orleans? Have breakfast at the Cafe du Monde of course! There are now a few branches of the famous cafe in the area. After checking out of the Red Roof Inn Plus in Hammond (which surprisingly did not offer breakfast, only a bland coffee), I drove to Covington for beignets and cafe au lait (yumm) before continuing to the long term parking garage at MSY (New Orleans International Airport).

Parking was pretty simple, secure and quite affordable. A free shuttle operated every 15 min (guaranteed, or you get 50% off parking), and a mobile app that I downloaded prior to my trip tracked where the shuttle was. Nice touch, using technology. I had no problem getting my luggage to the airport, met up with a cruise buddy who just arrived from Houston and we shared a taxi to the Marriott New Orleans where we were to spend a night before transfering to the ship on Sunday. There was light rain with heavy storms were predicted later in the evening but we got to the hotel without incident. It was crowded in the lobby, the Mardi Gras celebration had just started despite the actual event being 10+ days away. Part of the Mardi Gras parade route was right in front of the hotel; guests were in party mode, wearing a lot of beads that looked like they caught from earlier parades. We checked in, dropped luggage in our respective rooms and walked to the French Quarter for lunch. The streets were wet and not too busy although lines were starting to form at many restaurants. We got a table pretty quickly at the Gumbo Shop, one of my favoritie FQ restaurants.

After lunch, I went out to Canal St. (in front of the hotel) to catch a parade. Not a lot of people out since the weather had turned cold and very windy, with some drizzle in between. The disposable rain poncho I had on was not very useful. Still, it was fun to watch the colorful floats and try to catch the more unusual beads that were being thrown by Krewe members.

I got pretty wet and chilled, loaded with beads, by the time the parade ended. I wondered what to do with all those beads, with no extra space in my luggage. There was a bin in the lobby for guests to recylce unwanted beads. Then I spied some fellow cruise mates at the bar, and distributed parade spoils among the willing -- problem solved! The evening parades were cancelled, as heavy thunderstorms started. It got so bad that most of us decided not to venture out, but stayed at the hotel bar which had a limited menu althoough the food as quite decent. It was unfortunate that we did not get to experience what would have been a fun pre-Mardi Gras evening in New Orleans. At the same time, our STI cruise coordinator announced that we needed to be out on the bus to the cruise terminal by 10 am (instead of 1 pm) because cancelled parades were rescheduled to the morning and roads will be closed. So it was prudent to make an early night of it.