Mardi Gras

Last night I went to the Mardi Gras parade with some people from my college. Mardi Gras is different here as it celebrates gays and lesbians. Many people were dressed up in costumes so it reminded me in some ways of Halloween. We took the train down, not knowing where exactly we were going, but since Mardi Gras is one of the biggest celebrations here, we figured we’d just follow the crowd of people and eventually get to where we wanted. After getting off at Town Hall, we just followed the crowds through Hyde Park and then back through Hyde Park and around one street after another. For a while, I thought we’d just be walking in circles all night. Luckily we had about an hour before the parade started. Eventually we came to the street with the parade. There were so many people, it was hard to walk through the crowds and try to see the street where the parade was coming down. 

Eventually the parade started and all we could see were the tops of the floats pretty much. I tried to take pictures but they all came out blurry. A lot of people brought crates to stand on even though they were towards the front. A guy in front of us was recording the parade on a video camera and it was almost better to watch that tiny little screen because he was holding it up so high that it could actually get the parade. 

Since we couldn’t see much of anything, we decided to leave and headed to a Pub. First we had to figure out how to get back towards Town Hall. As we were walking back, we recognized the streets that led us to the parade and basically took a backwards loop of our walk there. We found a Pub, called Civic VIP lounge and got in. The security guard at the door was a bit confused with my Illinois driver’s license so I had to point out my birth date for him and got in.

It was much quieter being inside and finally being able to sit down was nice too. At first, there were 6 of us. Then some other people wanted to meet up with us so we waited for them. Then we met up with some others as we were walking towards another place. I don’t know how many people we had then, but we all headed to a bar and dance place which was super crowded just like everywhere else. Me and a few friends attempted to dance on the dance floor but it was so crowded and they weren’t playing good dance music. We ended up staying there for the rest of our time downtown and just barely catching the last train at 11:40pm back to the University. It was quite the interesting night as most of the time none of us really knew where we were going, but we stayed together and made it back in one piece!