By: Steve Dellar | 02-13-2018 | News
Photo credit: Dreamstime

#FatTuesday - Happy 300th Birthday New Orleans

Grab some beads y’all because Mardi Gras is here! New Orleans expects tens of thousands of revelers for parades and good old fashioned fun as Mardi Gras caps the Carnival season.

Carnival comes from the Latin ‘Carnem Vale’ or ‘the end of meat’, when people would be eating the last of their rich, fatty foods before Lent, the season where Christians fast and give up worldly pleasures.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FatTuesday?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FatTuesday</a> y&#39;all! We&#39;re celebrating with some TASTY treats on <a href="https://twitter.com/WTNH?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WTNH</a> at 9am today! Anyone celebrating? Rolling out a paczki today?? <a href="https://t.co/BV530zBXEw">pic.twitter.com/BV530zBXEw</a></p>&mdash; Laura Hutchinson (@LauraHutch8) <a href="https://twitter.com/LauraHutch8/status/963364226483064835?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2018</a></blockquote>

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And so millions of tourists are flocking to New Orleans for its famous Bourbon Street Mardi Gras celebrations featuring elaborate parades, costumes and music.

Revelers will be enjoying traditional sweet treats (like the famous purple, gold and green King Cakes).

At the same time, this Louisiana port city celebrates its own 300th anniversary, which makes it a very special occasion.

Mayor Landrieu of New Orleans invites everyone to join in the festivities: “As we approach 2018, we honor our city’s history and her place in the world. New Orleans is a resilient city, as history has proven many times over. We have faced and overcome the challenges of rebuilding a great city after fire, war and disasters both natural and manmade. With the Tricentennial, we now have the opportunity to celebrate the hard work of generations of New Orleanians who have made us one of the world’s most authentic and beloved cities and to remember the fullness, richness and diversity of our history as it should have always been remembered. I invite you to join us.”

The oldest parading Carnival group called Rex celebrates the tricentennial with 21 of its 28 floats commemorating the history of those that lived in the area when the Europeans settled it in 1718 until the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It&#39;s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FatTuesday?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FatTuesday</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/EugeneRamirez?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EugeneRamirez</a> is speaking French on <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSMiami?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CBSMiami</a>. Tune in! <a href="https://t.co/SZJz9yJIFi">pic.twitter.com/SZJz9yJIFi</a></p>&mdash; Lauren Pastrana CBS4 (@LaurenPastrana) <a href="https://twitter.com/LaurenPastrana/status/963356465523195904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2018</a></blockquote>

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There will also be a float in the Rex parade for the St. Louis Cathedral (the descendant of a church built the year of the city’s founding as well as the yellow fever (the unfortunate viral disease which killed more than 41,000 people in the city between 1815 and 1905).

Source:

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/585168416/new-orleans-hopes-gutter-buddies-will-keep-mardi-gras-beads-out-of-storm-drains

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1 Comment/s
Anonymous No. 18335 2018-02-13 : 14:35

Whodat, Whodat…

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