First trip of the day was to 'Mardi Gras World'- the workshop were the artists are currently making the floats and props for next year, and where you can walk around and see a very small percentage of past props. We got a beaded necklace with our ticket (because part of the reason the parade is so special is because the floats threw out lots of presents, including lots of these necklaces), and then went into a cinema room where we were allowed to try on genuine Mardi Gras costumes, and take pictures with some of the figures there. We then watched a film about the history of the parade, and then got a slice of 'King Cake', which I only finished because I was really hoping to get one of the toys they hide in the cake (I didn't).

She then showed us around the warehouse. The first stage in making a prop from scratch (although they keep all of them that they make and renovate them when they can be reused), once the design team has created an image of what it will look like, is cutting out the shapes of the layers. They use layers so that they waste less than just carving out of one big block. They then stick the layers together, and carve away at those, ready for the papier mache. These then get passed onto the paint team, who use a paint which is like painting on layers of plastic, so that it is more resistant to the rain. The paints were very vibrant. She then took us to see some of the floats. What is amazing is that the crews, who put on a parade, do so out of their own pocket. When we asked why they did this, the main answer was that it was fun, but it also brings a lot of revenue to New Orleans from tourists coming to visit. We were then free to look around at our own free will. I liked Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast and the Lego man the best.

We carried on walking into the centre of town, although I hadn't realised how much longer it was, and had a look around the French Market, as it was covered and it had started to rain. The first part was the food bit, and then there was a small flea market at the end, where a poet recited one of his poems to me, which was all about having a great start to your day, and was a very positive poem to own, but I felt $3 was a bit much for a printed bookmark. I wanted to get a crawfish beignet (a beignet is kind of like a croissant covered in icing sugar normally, but obviously this one wouldn't be) but the stall was all out, and the stall selling Shrimp grits only sold it at breakfast time, so I thought I'd wait until later to get some food, as I knew I could get grits at Mother's restaurant, which Steven had recommended to us.

We walked to the Voodoo temple, which had a locked door, but said open, but when I knocked on the door, a lady answered and led us through to the temple. The priestess asked what she could do for us, and we said we were just curious, and the priestess laughed and started rambling on about Queen Elizabeth the 1st and all she did for feminism and something about woman aren't equal because they have birth at different times. She even said something about Kate Middleton wanting another man- it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, as I thought she'd tell us more about what voodoo was. A boy was also there with us, who was also taking a lot of spiritual things like how he meets people every day and he learns from every single one of them.

Thankfully, the priestess said she was really busy, and so we had an excuse to leave so I didn't have to carry on pretending I understood what she was on about, and I was really scared that the boy would talk to us as we left, but he didn't. We carried onto Mother's, where I also ordered turnip greens and coffee with chicory, although I couldn't taste any difference to normal coffee, and the greens had ham in it (which is what Mother's is famous for). Alice had a crawfish etoufee, which was pretty similar to the gumbo we had, and the grits were a bit plain on their own, but we got a massive bowl of them for $2.50.

We walked to Wal-Mart, and had a bit more of a look round, and then went back to the hostel for a bit, where I had a complete 'I hate my clothes, I hate my hair moment'. We caught the bus to the French Quarter, and went to a bar on Frenchmen Street. Since Bourbon is a speciality of the region I tried a vanilla infused Bourbon, and Alice had a cider. We were sat on some sofas at the back of the room, whilst we waited for the next band to start, and a couple came over and the guy asked whether we were in the V.I.P area, so we had a bit of a joke about why there was a commoner in there.

Because there were no seats left in the main bit, some business men came over and sat down where we sat. They were on a business trip, and said that their company had booked out the Harry Potter world in Universal Studios for the whole company and customers! We moved onto the next bar with them, where there was a good blues band on- the singer was a sweet old man, and Alice brought his CD. One of the guys taught me how to dance to blues, and Alice came up with the meaning of life- there is no meaning of life so humans have created the meaning of life which is to procreate.

We left, with the excuse of having to get the bus, but then bumped into a boy and girl who had been in the same pub- Cosmo and Jenna- who offered to give us a lift home in their car. Problem was they kept bumping into their friends, and it was really cold, although trying to do Jenna's friend Stallone's hula hoop was a bit warming. Then some men in a band started playing the guitar and singing. We managed to get away soon after that thought.