An Easter Parade!

I started my day with 9:00 mass at the Cathedral of St. Louis King of France. Today may have been the only day in my life that I was 40 minutes early for mass and good thing I was because it was standing room only by 8:45! 

After that we took a cable car to the cemeteries and wandered around aimlessly. I think you need a tour to make the experience worthwhile. They are lovely and mysterious.

We should have known something was up when we saw ladies with outrageous hats in the cable car across from us. 

But still it was a fun surprise when we happened upon the Easter Parade on Bourbon Street. The streets were packed with families as well as the usual drink toting crowd. There were colorful hats on spectators as well as on parade participants. We were hungry so we went into Arnaud's Remoulade restaurant for lunch and ordered a tasty Jambalaya to split and watched the parade as we ate. 

Afterwards I traveled on my own to the Garden District which has stately old homes and the cities first cemetery. It also has some nice restaurants and specialty shops along Magazine St. 

The weather got windy and rain threatened so I took a bus back into downtown. It costs only $3.00 to get a day long pass to use public transportation. Once again, in comparison, Seattle's public transportation comes up short. It was my wish to hear jazz tonight at Preservation Hall but that was not to be. We lined up at 7:20 but the line was too long and it seemed unlikely that we would be allowed in to the 8:00 show so we meandered down Bourbon Street and listened to the cacophony of music coming from bars and people laughing and talking on the street. We stepped briefly into a place or two but nothing was exactly to our liking so we ended up back in our hotel suite with a bowl of gumbo 'to go' from City Diner.