Taking on New Adventures

Mardi Gras 2025 was a strange one. As usual, our final two weekends started with our participation in the Krewe of Cork parade. This year, we were able to participate in the Grand Marshal dinner on Wednesday night and the Meet and Greet party on Thursday before the day-long festivities on Friday. To say it was a busy 3-day stretch is a vast understatement. But it was definitely a fun way to kick off the final two weeks of the season.

We paraded on Saturday with our friends and were able to really enjoy the day. But the first Sunday of parades were fully rained out, which really threw everyone off. The city moved those 3 parades to Tuesday, but without bands and marching krewes. So we rested on Sunday to gear up for what was sure to be a very long 8 days of parades.

Tuesday came and we went out to support the parades that rolled that night. Although it was a huge bummer not having the marching bands and the dancing krewes, the floats were beautiful and it looked like the riders were still having a blast. We managed to hit up the Wednesday parades, including Alla, which replaced Nyx, and then came back out on Thursday night for Babylon, Chaos and Muses. Unfortunately Chaos had a major breakdown and that delayed Muses quite a bit. They didn’t even finish up by us until midnight, which is significantly later than normal. But the parade was as beautiful as ever, and I’m glad we hung out until the end.

The rest of the weekend had more parades and fun. We tried to do as much as we can, and see as many friends as we could. The weather was pretty good until Tuesday, when the forecast was for really high winds and thunderstorms late in the day. So the city changed the times of Zulu and Rex, and made the parades roll without bands. It was really weird and definitely did not have the same vibes as a normal Mardi Gras day.

I did manage to head to the Quarter once Zulu ended. It was not nearly as crowded as normal but still was fun. I ended up sitting at the bar at Grapevine and did some people watching and wine drinking. The day was overall really good, even if it wasn’t the wild and crazy day that we normally have.

While it will never be the same, I’m glad we did 2025 as well as we did, even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted to do given the way the year began and everything we have going on in life.