Happy Late Mardi Gras: Spring Break 2019

As far as the title...if you know, you know. *giggles*. 

My official spring break landed on the days March 4th through 8th this year which was also the tail end of the Mardi Gras Celebration which began January 6th and ended on Fat Tuesday, March 5th. This would have been nice to know considering my friends and I arrived midday on the fifth. To our luck, we stayed on St. Charles Ave.  which was one of the main streets the parade was held on. ​Upon our arrival, we walked up and down the block trying to find our AirBnb. 

Once we found where we were staying with the help of my GPS and a local, we settled in, showered and got dressed. While making ourselves at home, we had a mini photoshoot with the good light coming in from the semi-balcony doors. . After our shoot we headed out to the parade. I'm not sure what I expected of the actual parade but I definitely did not expect people to be throwing random objects from foam footballs to pineapples. There was no real significance to these items just more so being able to use these items as souvenirs. There were a variety of vendors on the streets that sold both liquor and food. Okay, brief intermission, besides crawfish, it's a must that tourists try the drinks by the name of, Hurricane, Fishbowl, and Hand Grenade as well as beignets:) I tried all but one and for the most part, I must say 10/10, I highly recommend. 
The parade ran until about roughly 8 p.m. if I can recall correctly. 

​Following the parade, we walked 10 minutes to Bourbon St. The street was packed with people. There was a number of restaurants, clubs, and bars. People were on balconies throwing beaded necklaces down to the people in the streets. Both men and women showed their chests to get thrown beads. We ate on Bourbon twice and both times were a fail for me. The first night eating there I ordered a shrimp po'boy, fries, beignets. The sandwich was dry, the fries were normal, and the beignets were good but it literally tasted like bread with powered sugar. And though my tastebuds weren't screaming with excitement, I would eat it again. The second night we ate on Bourbon I still didn't learn my lesson because I ordered an alligator po'boy with sweet potato fries...again it was dry and I could only eat so many sweet potato fries. Bad ordering on my part and I think I might just stick to the po'boys up here in Michigan. 

The second day in New Orleans we got a late start, we headed out for brunch at 2 p.m. and stumbled across a restaurant that ended up being the best food that I had ate while being in Louisiana. I ordered a seafood omelette that contained crawfish, shrimp, mushrooms, and other veggies, a biscuit and grits...my mouth is watering just thinking about it. While searching for a place to eat brunch and for something to do after we ate, we half-assedly site saw around the French Quarters and Business District.

Knowing mean is knowing I love to shop, therefore we went to The Outlet Collection at Riverwalk. This was located in the back of a hotel but was still a legitimate enclosed mall on the Mississippi River. Not seeing much, we all left empty handed and headed back to our room. I'm not sure if it was just that there was literally nothing eye-catching or that I wasn't in the mood to shop that I couldn't even find any souvenirs worth buying. 
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Later that night my friend got her first tattoo! The people in the shop were nice and the manager had really nice business cards. Like REALLY nice! The cards were made of the same material that credit cards are made of. He was far too fancy for me but on a side note, I need some. Overall, the southerners had really cute accents and they made us realize our accents too or how "proper" we were one guy said. 

After we left here is when we went to eat on Bourbon again. After eating we searched for a social spot to go to. After club hopping for about 45 minutes we ended up at this club called The Swamp. They played lots of throwbacks and many songs I didn't know so I wasn't too lit but one guy was. The bouncer to the club was trying to escort this drunk guy out but the drunk guy got violent and took the bouncer out. This cleared half the club out because of course everyone wanted to see. At this point the bouncer lost the fight and someone else was put on door duty. Ending the night off with a bang we prepared for our departure in the morning.

Though I left some details out, I enjoyed myself in New Orleans and definitely would go back to learn more about the history of both the state and city as well as eat at some better restaurants! *inserts rolling eye emoji*

Oh! And for the title, this old man holding beads came up to my friends the day after Mardi Gras when we were talking to this man and said, "Happy Late Mardi Gras" in this croaky kind of voice and scared my friends off. The man we were talking to responded, "I don't think they want no beads man." Lol I promise it was funnier in person. See you next Spring Break 2020... XOXO