WWII Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Mardi Gras World

Wednesday was cold and rainy- a good day for indoor activities.  I have been to New Orleans many, many times- mostly for business.  I have eaten at many of famous restaurants but have never had a chance to see the museums.  At the top of the list, was the WWII museum.  We really enjoyed it.  We have seen many museums about WWII and watched numerous documentaries. We still learned a few new things at this museum.  I loved this special edition Harley that was redesigned for the Army- complete with a scabbard for a rifle.

They had a wonderful exhibit on the merchant mariners and a very detailed presentation on the Italy invasion- both get overlooked in most museums and documentaries.

Overall, it is a very good museum.  It is very large and spread out.  We thought they had a lot of wasted space.  But, the exhibits are very well done giving a good history of each campaign- it is well worth the visit.

We also took in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.  This is an excellent museum.  We especially enjoyed the Walter Anderson and Michael Meads exhibits.

 

This morning it was still pretty cold out.  We decided to visit Mardi Gras World.  They make many of the floats used for Mardi Gras.  We also learned that they make the cows for the Chick-Fil-A  billboards and lots of other advertising art.

They have 18 warehouses that house the different Mardi Gras floats.  The floats that they were working on were for the Krewe Of Orpheus.  Their parade will be at 6:00 pm on Feb 8th the day before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). The Orpheus theme for this year is Mythology.

They show a film about the history of Mardi Gras and then take you on a tour of the studio.  Then, they turn you lose to wander around and look at the floats.  It was pretty cool.  A little pricey but fun to get such a close up look at the incredible art work that goes into the floats.

We have taken time to eat a few dozen oysters and a couple of shrimp sandwiches washed down with Abita beer :).  I love this town- can't believe I stayed away so long. 
Tomorrow, we will take in our first ever Mardi Gras parades.  We will start with the Krewe of Cork's parade through the french quarter. The Krewe of Cork is dedicated to the celebration of Wine.  I am thinking we are going to like this parade :)  There are three more parades on the traditional uptown route tomorrow night. I am not sure how long we will last but we will give it a go.