Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler

In honor of Fat Tuesday, I am finally getting around to recapping our weekend in New Orleans for some Mardi Gras parades during the Carnival season!  Midweek, I got the crazy idea that we had to get to New Orleans and soak in all of the Mardi Gras craziness while we were living down South.  I feel like it's a bucket list "must do".  I thought for sure all hotels would be sold out but we lucked into a room at our favorite NOLA hotel, The Roosevelt and made plans to head down for Saturday and Sunday, pending Rob's schedule.


We slept in on Saturday and drove down to New Orleans (about a three hour drive from Meridian).  We checked into the hotel and headed to grab a late lunch at Antoine's.  We had a ridiculous feast of oysters, steak, andouille sausage stuffed pork, bread pudding, and of course, a few rounds of 25 cent martinis.  The food was all amazing and this will definitely be our new lunch tradition when we are in town.  The weather was gorgeous so we walked around the French Quarter and shopped all afternoon.  We grabbed beignets from Cafe Du Monde and headed to watch a few parades (the parades are pretty much constant the two weeks leading up to Mardi Gras!)  The people watching during Mardi Gras is fabulous! haha It was so interesting to see the differences between the parades in New Orleans vs other parades, like in Pensacola.  I was not expecting all of the floats to have masked men throwing beads...it was a little creepy!  Standing towards the end of the parade is definitely the best way to get lots of throws.  We grabbed a nightcap at the Sazarac Bar before heading off to bed.



Sunday morning we woke up and had brunch at The Ruby Slipper.  I heard great things about the brunch but honestly didn't have that amazing of an experience.  The food was good (specifically the bacon!) but we were seated at the bar, the service was painfully slow, and our waitress (the bartender) didn't seem interested in us at all.  After brunch, we did a little more shopping and then headed to Bourbon Street to watch a few more parades.  We grabbed a bottle of champagne and a king cake from Rouse's Market to enjoy on the sidewalk during the parade.  It was so much fun to just relax in the sun and soak up the Mardi Gras fun before heading home.




Have you ever been to New Orleans during Carnival season?  (I learned that Mardi Gras is simply the name for Fat Tuesday, the whole season is actually called Carnival!)