Mardi Gras and More
- Paula Coder McCarthy
- Aug 13, 2021
- 2 min read
New Orleans Day 2
The day started out leisurely. I took my time getting ready and hopped on the Hop On and Hop Off bus around 11:00 a.m. for a 90-minute tour of New Orleans on a double-decker bus.
We toured the Garden District, the French Quarter, down Canal Street, past Bourbon Street, the Superdome and the Convention Center, and the Mardi Gras warehouse where they build the Mardi Gras floats.
New Orleans is under construction. I could still see remnants of Hurricane Katrina as many buildings were being renovated and remodeled. The tour guide told us sections of town where homes were worth millions of dollars and some that sold as starter homes for $300,000 within blocks of each other. It was a great idea to see the city and to obtain an overview of what is going on here on the ground before my stay got started.
I read an editorial in The Times-Picayune that helped me put the pieces of the town together even more.
Recently, it made national news that the New Orleans Jazz Festival has been canceled for the fall. The festival draws 100,000 people each year and the guest editorial writer, Arthur Hardy, suggested it was a measure by the establishment to rattle the cages of the people basically saying - if you don’t get your COVID-19 vaccines Madi Gras will be canceled again this year. (Arthur Hardy is the publisher of the Mardi Gras Guide and a leading expert on the history of Carnival.)
For locals, Madi Gras is mammoth and it is based on large groups that they call krewes (crews with a k and an es). Each Krew member belongs to a float and apparently, they work on the floats all year in preparation for the parade. It becomes a social group of sorts. Some groups have floats and other groups design costumes all year. And of course, there is competition.
Some of the information above I acquired at a cocktail party after the opening session of my group meeting at the World War II Museum.
Sarah, our young leader who works for the museum, met our group in the lobby at 3:50 p.m. and we walked over to the 4D Solomon Victory Theater to see Beyond All Boundaries narrated by Tom Hanks.
To say I was moved is, to say the least. I will need to write an entire blog post on the film and this experience. My seat shook when the tanks moved over the horizon. It snowed on me when the troops were in the forests of Germany. I was on the beaches of Normandy, and I felt like I was in the cockpit of an airplane with enemy fire going off all around me.
And, I was in the jungle of the Philippines.
Of course, I couldn’t help thinking of my dad, and in the end, I was in tears.
Thank God, Sarah took us back over to the hotel for a complimentary glass of wine.
We ended our day with a cocktail party and dinner at Rosie’s Rooftop. As I became acquainted with some of my fellow travelers, I discovered one of the women on the tour was originally from Osage City, Kansas, but now lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.
It is a small world after all.
This is really great Paula. It makes everyone want to take the tour!
The film was amazing. So glad you are there.