We began the day at a more leisurely pace, wandering toward the Mississippi, where we would catch a ferry to take us across the river to Algiers. We stopped at the convenience store to buy sunblock (better late than never, I guess), and found that apparently people don't get sunburn in New Orleans (or they expect the tourists to bring their own) because the store had only 1 bottle of 15 spf sunblock that looked like it had been on the shelf for a long, long time. We also stopped to take some pictures outside of St. Louis Cathedral, where Lori attracted the attention of a rather stoned man, who told us that he was also from Massachusetts, and also that he had spent the previous night in a van with some hippies who had "made" him smoke pot.

Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World was definitely one of the highlights of our trip to New Orleans. This artist's studio is responsible for building the Mardi Gras floats. Since we were visiting just after Carnival, we got to see many of the floats and props from this year's parade, as they were in the process of being dismantled in preparation for the new creations being started for next year's parade. We took the tour, which started with a short video on the history of Mardi Gras, and an opportunity to try on some costumes and take silly pictures.

We had "King Cake" and then our tour guide showed us briefly around the warehouses, which included a visit to the workshop, where a woman was beginning to transform a white papier mache bird into a fiery red phoenix. While we were there, she was making new wings for the creature out of styrofoam covered in papier mache. Photography was not permitted of the people working, as it was considered distracting, so I stopped back later to get a photo of the workshop.

We also wandered through the "party room" which was lined with the permanent floats for the superkrewes, such the giant Leviathon, a sea dragon float covered in fiber optic lights, as well as the "Bacchasaurus," an old-fashioned riverboat, and two merpeople who were also lit with fiber optics.

After the guided portion of the tour was over, we were invited to explore the warehouse at leisure and take pictures. Most of the visitors to Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World probably come home with pictures very much like this.

When we had finished fleeing from, being eaten by, and otherwise interacting with the Mardi Gras props, we spent a little time in the gift shop. Finally, we bid farewell to the Mardi Gras World, caught the shuttle back to the ferry, and took the ferry back across the river.

St. Louis Cathedral, as seen from the Mississippi River during the ferry ride back to New Orleans.

Next on the agenda for day four of our vacation was a trip to the Audubon Zoo. Accordingly, we caught the St. Charles Streetcar for the ride through the Garden District. We arrived at the stop for the Audubon Park, which we had to traverse to reach the zoo, having spent the ride listening to the anecdotes of an off-duty tour guide who happened to be sitting next to us on the streetcar.

The walk through the park was lovely, we saw turtles sunning on a log floating in the stream, and trees which were covered with hundreds of birds, as well as some sort of dog show which was taking place at one end of the park. The trees along the stream were beautifully twisted and stretched over and into the water.

Although we hadn't originally planned to visit the zoo...after all, you don't normally think "New Orleans = Zoo," we were enticed by the fact that they had a "Louisiana Swamp" section, featuring animals native to the region...including alligators. Since we didn't have the time or money to take a tour of an actual swamp, this seemed like a good alternative. It turned out to be a lot of fun. The zoo has a nice set up, with the animals grouped by region. The spaces were pretty open, and we were amused to see rabbits hopping through the exhibits, seemingly unaffected by their exotic neighbors: gazelles, greater kudu, etc...though the bunnies did seem to enjoy taunting the bears in the Louisana exhibit, hopping along the outside of the fence which marked the border of the bears' cage.

The zebras lined up nicely for a photograph...too bad they were facing the wrong way.

Playing on some statuary in the Lion Exhibit:

We saw all sort of animals during our visit: giraffes, spider monkeys, sloths, tortoises, elephants, alligator (including a rare white alligator), and white tigers.

After our tour of the zoo, we trekked back across the park, which seemed less pretty and more tortuous on this second viewing, when our already aching feet protested every step of the walk back to St. Charles Avenue. Luckily, the ride back to the Quarter allowed us to rest our feet for a little while. Lori had an appointment for a tarot card reading, so we made our way back to the Voodoo Museum, where the proprietor was waiting for us. I amused myself by taking some more pictures in the museum, reading some more of the informational placards located in the display cases, and looking at the photographs I'd already taken in the courtyard of the museum.

Lori fetched me when her reading was over, and we decided to go to dinner at Irene's Cuisine, an Italian eatery which had been recommended by the voodoo priest who ran the Voodoo Museum. For our last dinner in New Orleans, we treated ourselves to quite the feast; although we had to wait a while for a table, we had time to peruse the menu and decide on our meal. Lori daringly ordered escargot for an appetizer and we had lamb and duck for dinner, and tiramisu and Strawberry Napoleon for dessert. We devoured all of our food and left the restaurant feeling stuffed and happy, and took a leisurely waddle back to our hotel.