My Guide to Mardi Gras
Salutations Good People,
Having been through Mardi Gras now, I am better armed with information– nay, guidance– to offer to anyone who is interested in checking out this intense and amazing festival in New Orleans — which I now dub “Las Vegas of the Caribbean”.
I had some reservations about going to New Orleans prior to my trip and I will discuss them below as compared to what I actually experienced in my time in New Orleans.
Safety Concerns-
I admit it, I bought into the negative hype that New Orleans has received. Prior to going to Mardi Gras, I had read a lot of terrible things about New Orleans online. Everything from “only carry enough cash on you that you’d be okay having stolen”, “cover your drink – people will spike it”, and to avoid going onto side streets out of fear of muggings or murders; all very reminiscent of the time when trick-or-treating got dark with threats of razor blades in apples, and injected drugs into candy (of which, despite the news/fear-mongering, I never heard of ever happening to anyone). From what I saw — in the French Quarter, at least — there was nothing irrational to fear. Everyone there seemed to be there for the same reasons that I was: to drink and have a good time. So long as you were cool and respectful (i.e. apologizing/recognizing if you bumped into someone), people were there to do their own thing and not too interested in anyone else.
I had cleared out my wallet prior to leaving Portland, so I was only carrying, essentially, one card and my ID. That was it. AND I had broken my cash into allotments that I kept in the hotel so that I had no more than $40, in cash, on me at any time — again, as a reaction to the reports that I heard about muggings and robberies. It turns out, though, that the only robbery is done at the bars. But I’ll get to that later.
We were out walking all over the French Quarter until 3am, 4am on a few nights and never once got any sort of gut feeling like “Hey, maybe this is a bad idea” — there were people around, lots of people, all throughout the night, and you never really went more than a block or two without seeing police on patrol. And, even though Bourbon was crowded and crazy, it was probably the safest street in the entire world, hahaha. There were police stationed on corners; sitting in squad cars on side streets; in these mobile-police-watch-tower-looking-things watching from above; mounted police; and uniformed (and street dressed) officers even walking throughout the crowd.
So, if you were holding back on attending Mardi Gras because you had heard horrible things about New Orleans, I wouldn’t pay too much mind to them. Just be smart, polite, and don’t go wandering off into the greater city by yourself — although, that should be a good rule to follow, in general, when in a new city.
New Orleans is Dirty-
I had always heard (possibly Yankee propaganda) that the South was dirty and that New Orleans, equally so, was a dirty city. I don’t think that is true, though. Granted, the parade routes (where you had hundreds/thousands of people lined up for miles) got dirty and gross, as trash cans were overfilled leading a lot of people — who knew it wasn’t their problem to clean up — to just drop their trash and discarded cups/bottles in the street, not to mention the mounds and mounds of discarded beads*; so, yes, if judging the city by the cleanliness of the parade route, then I’d have to agree that it was a dirty place. Same could be said for Bourbon Street, as I saw evidence of the same carelessness of tourists – who had no problem trashing the streets since they could wash their hands of it…both the trash and the responsibility….as well as gross things like vomit and other bodily functions…… #SomePeopleCantHandleMardiGras …..however, the rest of the Quarter was actually quite pretty. Outside of the parade routes and Bourbon Street, I thought that the streets and sidewalks were kept relatively clutter free. It makes sense, though, because a lot of those other streets have little shops and businesses (as opposed to bars) and so they have a store front and image to manage. So, while I had the misconception that New Orleans was a dirty city, I am inclined to believe that the filth is isolated to just specific places where you have way more people than the infrastructure is designed to support. And, to the City’s credit, each night those roads were cleaned nearly spotless. We would be crossing Canal at 11pm and see mounds of trash in the street being collected, and by the time we were walking/stumbling/heading back to the hotel, at 3am or 4am, the only evidence that a massive parade had passed through hours earlier were the barricades that remained on the sidewalk.
*I heard somewhere that it is bad luck to pick beads up after they have hit the ground…. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that it is not a wise decision. Once those beads hit the ground, they are pretty disgusting.
Expensive-
I wasn’t sure how much cash to bring on the trip – I typically don’t have cash on me in my everyday life, but I talked with people and got a wide range of suggestions. I believe that I ended up bringing around $200 in cash, figuring that it would be enough to handle the small purchases over the course of the trip, with my one card there as back-up (if necessary) and for larger purchases — i.e. I knew we were going to a rather fancy restaurant for brunch on Monday morning.
However, the pricing wasn’t ridiculous – in my opinion. The Hurricanes at Pat O’Briens — close to 30oz beverages, if I had to guess — ran for $9 (in plastic cups; $12 in souvenir glass), and so it was very possible to find places that were reasonably priced, and for both food and drink, too. Even the aforementioned fancy brunch that we attended — at The Court of Two Sisters — worked out to about $33 per person. Sure, that is a bit pricey for brunch, BUT it was very good food; coming hungry for it definitely made it worth every penny. Probably the most expensive part, per serving, was the beer. Beer was, surprisingly, much more expensive — by alcohol content — than liquor. For example, at one bar (I believe Rita’s Tequila House) crappy beer was $7 … $7!!! Meanwhile, it was not uncommon to find shots of Patron for $7-9…and that is actually good tequila. Not to mention the much larger, stronger Hurricanes from Pat O’Briens that got you feeling good and buzzed for a mere $8.
Mass Transit-
Prior to the trip, I had planned on buying the Jazzy Pass ($9 for 3-days) in order to get around New Orleans, but this would not have been a useful $9. For one, we stayed most of the time in the French Quarter, which is all in reasonable walking distance (even with an injured left foot, like I had for the last half of the trip). Secondly, New Orlean’s mass transit system, while inexpensive, is also reportedly not reliable. From the hotel staff, to the cabbies, to the locals, they all said the same things: it is tough to predict when and where a bus or street car will be at any given time. Thirdly, during Mardi Gras, and with the parades in full force, it causes a lot of the mass transit system to get either shut down or re-routed. The cabs weren’t too expensive and so I’ll opt to use them in the future instead — if I venture outside of the Quarter again. We only used the cabs when we were going out to the Garden District, and everyone that we talked to — our hotel staff, another hotel’s staff, the police, haha — had no idea if a) the street cars were running that day; b) they were running, what time (and how long) they would be running prior to the parades starting up; c) they were running, where we would be able to catch them; and d) hypothetically, they were running before the parade, they certainly would not be running during the parades, which would have made our return journey much, much, much, much more complicated. So, yeah, I’m no longer investing much thought or planning into the mass transit system.
Crowds – I don’t like large crowds of people, so that was something I wasn’t too fond of when thinking about Mardi Gras weekend prior to attending. However, outside of Bourbon Street (and parts of the parade route – namely, the few places where crossing was permitted), the crowds weren’t bad at all. In fact, we used Dauphine and Royal, respectively, as our way to travel from one part of Bourbon to the other because those streets were not nearly as crowded as Bourbon. Also, when going to Cafe du Monde (their beignets were pretty good), one of my hot co-workers had said that she spent hours in line waiting for them…. well, she must have went during the daytime when the crowds were at their height, because, when we went (at 3am, haha), there was no line. It was probably a 3min wait because we were all tourists who didn’t know what we were doing (so we were having to read the sign and figure out what we were getting, etc.). Bourbon, though, yeah, Bourbon was PACKED. On Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night, and certainly Tuesday night, it would take 10-15mins to walk one block — after being battered from side to side in a sea of people; the crowd coming to a complete stop as beads were getting thrown; getting hit by said beads that ricocheted out of control; and the occasional marching of horse-mounted police through the streets — it was PACKED.
Note: If you are an attractive young woman (or are traveling with an attractive young woman), expect to get grabbed/fondled in the crowd. It apparently happened to the girls that we were with and it’s really the perfect crime — in a never-ending sea of people and limbs, it could have came from anyone, and within a few seconds, the current of the sea shifts and sends everyone in different directions. It is chaos. But a kind of interesting chaos.
With all of that said, here are my suggestions on how to get the most out of Mardi Gras in New Orleans….
My Future Mardi Gras Suggestions:
1- Be Fearless in Your Merriment. I’m no longer concerned with safety as much as I was heading into this initial trip. It is truly a festive time of year. Yeah, I’m sure that if I went out looking for trouble that I would have no problem finding it, but, by and large, everyone is there to have fun – not end up in a fight or jail. Plus, as stated, there are soooo many police (local and State) in and around the French Quarter that, if anything were to go down, it would likely be squashed quite quickly. I can only imagine how much of a boost Mardi Gras has on the local economy and so I reckon that it’s in all of New Orleans’ best interest to keep the tourists safe and spending freely.
2- Limit Your Cash. I probably won’t bring as much cash next time, not out of fear of being robbed but because having the bank activity from my card will make retracing my steps after I get home that much easier to do. Really, I may just bring enough cash to tip the waitstaff at the places that we go. The only downside of using the card purely is that, in most places, tips put on a card don’t go directly to the waitstaff — so, I’ll plan on bringing small amounts of cash in order to tip the people that earned it. Especially, since I have plenty of souvenirs from this trip — 3 Hurricane glasses, some sweet beads, and other parade favors I collected — and so I don’t reckon that I’ll need to spend much money next time around on souvenirs.
3- Food/Supplies Shopping. I plan to utilize the grocery stores more than I did this time around. I had planned on doing so this time around — getting sandwich supplies, snacks, etc. to cut down on food expenses — but ended up just buying a fifth of rum, a juice mixer, and some granola bars. The downside was that, since I’m not big into Southern food anyways, I ended up eating mostly the same stuff I would have eaten up here — pizza, fries, burgers, etc. Ergo, next time, rather than paying $5 a slice or $12 for burgers & fries, I’ll look to maximize my food expenses at the grocery store and, a) eat more regularly (we averaged just 1-2 meals a day, haha); b) eat more healthily (not as much fried foods); and c) eat more economically….thus freeing up more cap-space for alcohol 😉 …or other fun things that I want to do that I didn’t get to do on this last trip (i.e. the WWII Museum, perhaps a swamp tour, etc.).
4- Avoid Beer, Stick to Liquor. In my opinion, which also aligns nicely with my preferences, it is better to stick to liquor. Beer seemed to be over-priced to me, and you could get much better deals with liquor at the bars. For example, when the girls we were with ditched us and went rogue for about 25mins (not part of the plan), we found them at a bar called Rita’s Tequila House. Now, it could be that tequila was their specialty (as the name suggests) and so they frowned upon beer patrons, but their crappy beer was about $7 – if I recall correctly. Crappy beer for $7? While the girls flirted to get free drinks? Double-loss for us. Especially, since that $7 was essentially the equivalent (in cost) of a Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane…. which would have been infinitely better. So, unless you absolutely like beer above all else, I wouldn’t waste my time with it. Stick to liquor – the quality is better and it’s more economical, meaning you can enjoy more of it throughout the trip.
5- Bring a Bag. Some places won’t let you in wearing a backpack, but I had one of those corded-bags and they didn’t seem to have many issues with that. Something light weight and fold-able is ideal because, after all, you have to pack it both ways; I found my flat-laying corded-bag perfect because I can just put it in my larger backpack/carry-on. It’s great for carrying around souvenirs or extra layers (it got cold on us a few times on our trip). You can also use it to transport other things like…
6- Bring Containers for Water/Booze. On Monday morning, when it became quite evident that I was not going to get any assistance finishing off my bottle of rum, I did what every grown man should do: handled. my. business. Using the water container that I brought along (Rubbermaid, 20oz capacity), I was able to fill it with a rudimentary cocktail (Snapple Strawberry/Kiwi juice + Bacardi Spiced Rum) which afforded me the option to: a) day drink in the open, without looking like I had a problem; and b) refill my beverages as appropriate when out on the town. I could have continued to buy Hurricanes at one of the bars we were at, at $15 a pop, orrr I could buy the one and just keep refilling it with my own blended concoction. I chose the latter. Hey, when it’s Fat Tuesday and the clock is ticking to get rid of your booze before closing time, you do what you must to complete the objective. Most places, even if they allow bags, will not allow outside food/drink (obviously, they want you to buy theirs instead), so be discrete if you must and respectful. Don’t try to refill your drinks in the middle of the bar, that is going to draw attention and, possibly, get you kicked out. Be smart.
7- Wear Comfortable Shoes. I don’t know if my shoes sucked (it’s possible, I knew they were an old pair and I didn’t want to break out the replacements on this trip to get utterly destroyed by the filth) or if I just wasn’t paying as close attention to the terrain of Mardi Gras as I should have. Regardless, my left foot was KILLING me by the end of the trip. The leading hypothesis that I have — since my right foot was fine — was that it wasn’t so much my shoes as much as it was me stepping on something (trash, discarded beads, bottles, etc.) uneven that tweaked a muscle in my foot. Regardless, making sure that you have adequate and solid footwear is certainly a good thing — especially if, like us, you plan on walking to almost every destination.
8- Be Prepared for Unpredictable Weather. From the moment that the forecast (reliably) came into range of our weekend in New Orleans, I was tracking the weather …. like Robert Muldoon, from the movie “Jurassic Park”. Because of this near-obsessive storm tracking, I was able to see that there was a good chance that the front half of our weekend was going to be warm and pleasant, but the latter half could be cold and wet; so I was able to plan accordingly with my wardrobe. However, despite the 6 pairs of shoes that the girls brought, they did not plan for cold temperatures and so they needed to buy parkas and sweaters while there (rookie mistake). Now, from what the locals all seemed to say is that: a) how cold it got for us was very atypical – coldest Mardi Gras it had been since the 1960s, I believe; and b) the weather is unpredictable that close to the Gulf – storms can come out of nowhere, dump a whole lot of rain, and then disappear and return to 70s and sunshine… sometimes all in the course of an hour or so. That said, keep an eye on the forecast as your travel date approaches: it can help you be prepared for what lies ahead. Don’t be like our girls and have to drop an extra $20 on clothing to keep warm. That’s what alcohol is for.
9- People Watch. Whenever you get a large group of people together for a weekend and there is alcohol and hormones in play, people-watching is at its best. Actually, sitting at the bar, watching the behaviors of college guys going after girls in the bars was probably one of my favorite parts of Mardi Gras; so predictable and yet so energizing. Easily one of my favorite parts of the trip, next to….
10- Photobombing. One of my favorite activities to do when I’ve been drinking. There is nothing quite as fun as being a part of someone’s memories….without invitation. Sure, you may think that photobombing is mean and pose the obvious question of “how would you like it if someone did that to you?” and, my answer: I think it’d be hilarious. Now, there are ways to do photobomb with class – I don’t do stupid faces or flipping off the camera or any nonsense like that; rather, I merely interject my smiling face into the background. Maybe they see me, maybe they don’t (until they get a good look at the picture), but, regardless, it is a lot of fun and something that I enjoy doing. I like to believe that I am in more stranger’s pictures than in pictures of my own. A fact that I believe is reasonably possible….considering I rarely take pictures…..but photobomb with great regularity. That said, if you go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, allegedly, the population grows by upwards of 500,000-750,000 people for that weekend, and so there is going to be a lot of opportunities to photobomb strangers. Some of my highest yielded areas: all over Bourbon Street; the street performers of Royal Street; and in the courtyards of bars (anywhere you can find people with a pleasant background or interesting thing, you’re going to find an opportunity to photobomb).
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I don’t know if I will go back for Mardi Gras, per se, because I have already experienced it…. and it was amazing. I do plan on going back to New Orleans at some point, as I reckon that it is probably much more affordable (lodging, etc.) outside of the Carnival season. However, if you do end up going to Mardi Gras in the future, follow my suggestions and make the most of your trip. It was a great time!! Best wishes, as always.
-Ryan.
The Peanut Gallery 