In New Orleans, there is a parade for everything. We honor funerals, the beginning of Lent, and the Super Bowl
(that parade was going to happen even if the Saints had lost last year) by marching through the streets and celebrating. Over spring break, I went to yet another parade—this one celebrating St. Patrick’s Day—with Her
Campus Tulane staffers Cat Combs and Alyssa Conti.
It may have had something to do with the fact that the St. Patrick’s Day parade fell four days after the end of Mardi Gras (during which I went to ten or eleven parades in the span of four days) but I didn’t absolutely love the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The first part of the parade involved hundreds of men walking down the street, handing out fake flowers in exchange for kisses. That lasted about 45 minutes before the actual, full-length parade began. Needless to say, it was long, and it was pretty hot outside. And at risk of sounding like a party pooper, by the time the actual parade started, I was ready for it to be over.
One cool thing about the St. Patrick’s Day parade is that the throws are decidedly more interesting than the ones during Mardi Gras.
People in the parade threw everything you could think of, from snacks (to tide us over during the long parade) to Irish Spring soap to cabbages for people to use to make soup with later in the week. My group caught more cabbages than we could even imagine carrying back, so we ended up giving some to other parade-goers as we were leaving. They also throw beads. A lot of beads. Too many beads, considering Mardi Gras had just ended and I never wanted to touch another string of shiny plastic beads ever again.
Next year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade will obviously fall a few weeks after Mardi Gras rather than a few days. Maybe I’ll like it better that way. But at least I can say that this year I participated in another New Orleans tradition, and even if I don’t go back next year, I still crossed another item off the list.