Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal in St. Louis.  I had no idea.  The festivities start in January with Epiphany Day (if that’s what it’s called) and they have lots of parades and events.  We didn’t get to any of the official parades in St. Louis – a lot of them aren’t very family friendly.  So, I read about a family friendly one in St. Charles and we decided to go.  We love St. Charles and we thought it would be fun.

We got there and parked by the cute old downtown like we usually do.  It was a cold day, but we were going to get lunch and then watch the parade.  But it was in the Frenchtown district.  Which was a bit further away.  Katsu went back for the car and me and the boys kept walking, quite a bit further.  We figured there would be some great restaurants in Frenchtown.  So, we kept walking.  and there was nothing … no people, no businesses … it looked like the time we went to Sault Ste. Marie, but worse.  It was deserted and at this point we were very hungry and tired.  We kept thinking we saw a place to eat – one looked promising until we got close enough to realize that it was a taxidermy place!  Finally, we found an itsy bitsy restaurant that was a bike shop / café and got a bite to eat.

Then, the parade started.  It was definitely for kids, but very small.  Notice in the pictures, there is like no one else there.  It had like 5 floats maybe.  It took like 5 minutes and the kids got lots of beads and candy (almost exclusively twizzlers, which they don’t like).  Then, the long walk back to the car.  but the kids really had fun.  It was an adventure.

For Fat Tuesday, I made some jambalaya.  It was really really good.  We’ll have to make it a tradition – it really felt like a feast.  And ended with a king cake.  The kids were drooling over it.  I don’t know why they left the baby on top and didn’t bake it into the cake, though.