New Orleans 4

The culmination of the hedonism of course, is the Mardi Gras, which in some ways I would have liked to have seen (we had a bit of a look at the Mardi Gras museum which was amazing) but at the same time, I hear it's a mad time of the year to be around.  Leonard said that the locals only come into town in February to look at the tourists.  He went on to tell the story of how one old man was riding in Leonard’s tour bus during Mardi Gras when an overwrought and rather well liquified gentleman dropped from a tree and rode on the top of the bus.  The old tourist was horrified, stormed to the front of the bus and demanded his money back:

"What sort of a tour is this, that's got young hooligans riding around the top of the bus?!" he ranted.

Leonard tried to reason with him, and told him that it was just Mardi Gras, but there was no calming him down.  He went back to his seat, still snarling that it JUST WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH, but then looked out of the window to see lots of young ladies lined up at the side of the street lifting their tops and flashing their boobs.

"Then he come on back to the front of the bus," said Leonard, "and he apologised to me and asked if he could ride up front with me.  Then he settled down and he had himself a good ol' time."

Apparently, flashing your boobs is a bit of a tradition in New Orleans.  The people on the floats have handfuls of beads necklaces that they throw to the women in the crowd once they have shown willing, as it were.  The bizarre thing is that as you drive down Charles Street, the trees are still all bedecked with these necklaces, still dangly gaily from the trees.  It's quite a spectacle.  Although not as much of a spectacle as the boobs.

My god, I've been rattling on about history for quite some time now haven't I?  Sorry about that - but I was fascinated by Leonard's stories, and I haven't told you half of them.  I truly envy his students.  He explained that, as part of his tour, he would tell us the whole, un-politically correct truth of the matter, and sorry if was offensive, but that's how it was.  I appreciated that.  He also went on to tell us how he had managed to send an entire bus to sleep with his stories once, "I looked around and they was all snorin' - so I drove them 'round the projects, jest to see if they would notice."  Then there was the time he had a bus full of seeing eye dogs.  "You'd be surprised - I get a lot of blind tour groups.  And the weird thing is, when you tell 'em to look left - they do."

Leonard ended up taking us to Audobon Park, which is devoted to the wildlife you find around a swamp, where we saw alligators, raccoons, brown bears and otters.  It was all very peaceful and relaxing after the bustle of New Orleans and slightly less smelly too.  After this, we got dropped back in the French Quarter, but not before passing through the pretty mansion houses of the Garden District, where Leonard pointed out that all the porches have sky-blue ceilings.  "This is to fool the birds and the bees.  They see the sky up there and they reckon they can't build a nest there.  That stops 'em sh*ttin' all over your porch.  I wish I had known that when I painted my porch ceiling green."