So, after our brunch and very very slow and lazy tour to the Aquarium, we figured out we still have time to go to the Mardi Gras World tour, which is a place where the company makes Mardi Gras parade props. The Mardi Gras World tour location is in a warehouse that’s not too far away from where we park our car. They have free shuttle bus that stops at different location to pick up and drop off tourist, so we took advantage of that.
Once we pay our entrance fee, we went into a room where they show the documentary about Mardi Gras history, explaining different the parade etc. We then left the room and were led by the narrator to walk around the warehouse to see all kind of work in progress as well as finished Mardi Gras parade cars and all sort of things.
An artist was working on her piece.
They never throw away the old props. They recycling them by either put the head of some other characters to the body of another characters, then add or repaint the new piece.
The parade car always start with sketch as blue print.
New pieces are start with stacks of block Styrofoams.
I think this is something from “Alice in the Wonderland”.
I think this is from the story of “Bean stalk and the Giant” inspiration.
You can see recycle items all over the place.
Once the decoration items are finished, they get put to the area close to the entrance of the warehouse, where they have like 2 stories tall of garage doors.
Smaller items are arranged together.
Different parade cars show different theme, I didn’t pay much attention to the narrator about how they choose the theme, like is it the client’s request, or based on what’s going on with the trend.
The car that show New Orleans.
The ware house is big! And they actually have a few of this kind of warehouse.
I wish I can have two of this at my house, you know, like the Chinese guardian lion statues found in many Chinese places.
Not everything are beautiful or scream its theme by the way.
I think this is for the swamp/wet land representation.
From symbolic representation of the surrounding area to the fantasy world.
This is definitely not a Chinese dragon.
You can’t miss Greek legendary creatures.
The expression of the Love Goddess is very good.
The detail goes into making the dress look like the real thing is impressive.
The parade car is quite big, and did you know they have toilet built into the car?
This kind of remind me of Bon Jovi for some reason.
This character is kind of awkward, may be they want to hide his pee-pee so ended up make his hip and pelvis too tiny.
It’s hard to peel my eyes away from this piece, it’s so colorful, disturbing yet doesn’t feel harmful or that evil.
Now that’s a big head!
Not sure if this is Conan or Tarzan, anyway, he’s tall!
Many more parade cars just laying around.
If I were to be standing in one of the car, this would be the one!
After Mardi Gras World tour, they dropped us back to where they picked us up, right in front of the River Walk.
It wasn’t late, but it felt that way because the moon and the chill of the night time temperature.
River Walk is a shopping mall area where you can hang out at their river front area to look at the river, and get on the ferry.
We didn’t spend time shopping at the mall because we just don’t have anything to buy. We didn’t plan to hang out on the street for long as we had to get up early the next day to hit the road. When we were at the City Tour, someone mentioned Fulton Street, which our bus passed by and it looked colorful.
After checking our map, we realized Miracle on Fulton Street is just two blocks away from where we were, so we decided to swing by and check it out.
From the outside of Fulton Street, you can’t tell what’s going on inside because the light inside is so bright it just blow your view into the street.
As you walk in side into the street, turns out they have decorated the street with countless number of lights, large ornament and many Xmas trees.
At the end of the street, which is right after that path of many Xmas trees, is a big Xmas tree.
There is no snow in New Orleans, nor overwhelming Xmas decoration and music around the downtown area of New Orleans, but once you get here, it just hit you that it’s Xmas season and it’s very festive!
After Fulton Street, we headed back to our resort and called it a night. The weather for the following day was not a good day for tourists, it didn’t affect us as we were heading out of the city that day. We decided to use a different route to get out of town, which is through the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. Why? Because it’s the longest bridge in the world!
The bridge runs 23.8 miles, when you’re 5 minutes on the bridge, the GPS just show that you’re in the middle of water.
The bridge is not mean for tourist hangout place. They have stop area for police and emergency parking every now and then, but there is just nothing interesting about the area that when you look at both side of the bridge, it’s just muddy water!
The rest of the journey home was slow, 16 hours of straight road trip back to Kansas City just take a toll on you mentally and physically. There isn’t much I can do in the car because it’s hard to read book in the car, my netbook doesn’t have enough juice to power up to watch movies because I don’t have a car charger for it. I did sleep a bit through out the journey, but not enough to get rid of the boredom. I think if I were to get on any long distance driving trip again, I might have to either break down the driving part, or be prepare to squeeze in some entertainment for the car ride. Needless to say, my trip to New Orleans did bring some closure to me curiosity about Cajun food. I tasted some not top of the line but still fine cuisine, seen the place that I didn’t have vivid memory about during the first time I was there. Would I go back to New Orleans again? No! Why? I just don’t find that place extraordinary, well, outside of Mardi Gras season anyway. There is no way I would go to Mardi Gras because everything is super expensive, safety could be an issue and the crown will be super frustrating to deal with when come to getting around town. So yeah, it’s safe to say I won’t go back again, unless some body treat me then I will definitely go back to Court of Two Sister, gosh I love that place!
I love the art works of the Mardi Gras props…. they are so real and massive.