New Orleans/FL Trip (Day 15) - New Orleans, LA

The rain last night blew through while we were sleeping and we awoke to clear and sunny skies, but very windy and cold. Our first stop this morning was a private tour of a warehouse, called a "den" where the Krewe of Thoth stores several of their floats. This Krewe had just paraded he day before, so the floats were filled with leftover beads and other goodies that never had been thrown to the spectators along the parade route. Someone comes in later to clean-up the mess, but we were encouraged to go through the floats and take whatever we wanted, so everyone came away with a plastic bag full of beads, stuffed animals, beer cup covers, doubloons, etc.






Our next stop was in the French Quarter at the New Orleans School of Cooking for lunch and a demonstration of both Creole and Cajun cuisines. Creole food is from the Spanish era of settlement and Cajun food is from the French Canadian era. We ate a delicious lunch of local sausage (Andouille) gumbo, shrimp jambalaya, bread, Bananas Foster (a dessert invented here) and Pralines (pronounced "Prahleens") made from brown sugar, butter and pecans (pronounced "p'cahns", not "peecans". The lady doing the cooking assured us that they had "peecans" in New Orleans, but that they were definitely not anything to eat. She talked about a lot of local history and her own personal history of Katrina in 2005 and since. It was an interesting and delectable lunch. accompanied by a great local beer - Abitta Amber. We bought a few things in the Cooking School store and a muffuletta sandwich for dinner before taking the tour bus back to the RV park for a short rest.





The two nighttime parades, Proteus and Orpheus started about 7:30 pm. It was still very cold and windy, but we stuck it out through both parades, caught lots of beads and stuff thrown from the floats, and arrived back at the RV about 11:30 pm, chilled through. The floats were spectacular, all commercially designed and fabricated, some of them huge (3-5 different sections for one float). Drew Brees, the Saints QB, was the King of Proteus this year and drew an enthusiastic cheer from everyone when his float went by.