Getting Ready for Mardi Gras

New Orleans is a night-time kind of place with so much music and so many restaurants and people in the streets enjoying themselves. Still it was fun to go out during the day and watch all the local people getting ready for the parades. Everyone decorates themselves and everything else with Mardi Gras beads.

Beads decorate the fences in front of homes on the parade route.

The people in this house really went all out decorating their fence.

Beads decorate the bicycles on the sidewalk. This is another one of my lensbaby attempts.

Another cool thing I couldn’t help but notice is the ladders. People make these ladders with seats on the top so the kids can see over the crowds. These ladders were lining the streets long before the parade began.

Check out how they put wheels on the back of those seats making it easy to move the ladders around.

This guy even had a custom mardi gras car! I’m not sure what mardi gras Tim does, but he sure has a cool car!

All that walking around chatting with people who were getting ready for the parade and photographing was a lot of fun. I wish I actually got to see a parade, but the preparations were exciting enough for me! A couple of hours before the parade was to begin the streetcar shuts down (since it is on the parade route) and wouldn’t start up again for a couple of hours after the parade, and my poor doggies would have been locked in the RV for far too long. It is really hard to visit cities with the dogs.

One of these years Ray and I will probably do another trip around North America and go to all the cities. This time we’re focussing on parks but we had to make an exception for New Orleans. I’m sure we’ll be back.