Mardi Gras - another day, another bag of beads (Throwback post)

For our Sunday parades, we did the same as Saturday and booked places in the stands for the daytime ones.  Today's Krewes were Okeanos, Mid-City, Thoth and in the evening, Bacchus.

Okeanos date back to 1949, and had decent enough, but not especially exciting floats.















Mid City are even earlier having started in 1933.  Their floats were decorated with a mass of bright coloured, shiny foils, with a time theme.

So they included clocks, Old Father Time, and Doctor Who - the time lord.  Apparently their throws included the Slap watches, but we didn't see any of those around, so I suspect they were few and far between.

Thoth, established in 1947, set out to make sure the  parades included those who were unable to get out to the normal routes due to illness; their original route was designed to take in fourteen institutions that cared for people with illnesses and disabilities.

They have an Egyptian look to their floats and this years theme was Kings.  King Kong, the King of the Jungle, King Penguins, King of the Pharaohs, and Elvis were amongst the offerings from them, and they looked really quite impressive.

In the evening, we were back on the street - further back this time though - for another superKrewe with the big neon floats.  Bacchus were not formed until 1968, but they quickly established themselves as a top parade because of the size of their floats.  Their decision to parade in a Sunday night broke with tradition of the time, as did their choice to have a celebrity King.

Their floats certainly had big impressive figures at the front, but there wasn't much decoration on the rest of it, so it wasn't one of my favourites despite being a big name. 

A this point I should also mention some of the other groups that are interspersed amongst the floats of the Krewes, as some of these were highly amusing.

You will have seen photos in the earlier posts too. Of course you have the various marching bands and dancers, and a few military groups including the Buffalo Soldiers on horseback.

There were also the Marching Dead and the Waddling Dead, which as you may guess were dressed as zombies etc, we had a host of Lady Godivas (in body stockings - this isn't Bourbon Street after all), the motorbike groups of the Honda Goldwings and the old green and yellow police Harley Davidsons.

But some of our favourites were the Elvises on mopeds, the men in the motorised reclining armchairs, and the men dressed as joggers from the 1970s - a bit like the 118118 adverts in the UK.

We returned home slightly less laden this evening.  Not because of a lack of things being thrown - we caught a number of whole bags of about three dozen bead necklaces as well as numerous plush toys and other bits - but because we had looked at our haul from the last two days and wondered what on earth we were going to do with it all.  So although we got a lot, and kept some of the more interesting pieces, we gave most of the beads and toys to people around us.

Daytona Beach

From Miami we took an overnight bus to Daytona.  We were a bit concerned about this before we even got on, when the driver said that she couldn't see someone's ticket in the low light as here eyes were bad.  Not really what you want to hear from your driver on a night trip!

But we made it safely there.  And this was to be our first go at couchsurfing, where some kind stranger lets you stay in their home for free.  More about that in a future posting.

Our host Georgy was excellent and happy to let us arrive at the early hour that our bus got in.  So we soon settled in to our latest temporary home, with Georgy, his very friendly little dog Sophie, and his somewhat disinterested Iguana.

Daytona Beach was small, but pleasant to walk around.  It is of course a place famed for its Speedway and Bike Week, so attracts many motorists and even more bikers.  We counted numerous bike shops, some with some bikes and trikes that even I have to admit looked pretty good.

We also popped into the Museum store of Bruce Rossmeyer's Daytona Harley Davidson.  This was the start of Rossmeyer's Harley Davidson empire, from which he became one of the biggest dealers and went on to own possibly the world's biggest Harley store a short distance away.  (And no Dad, we didn't make a special trip out there.)

Rossmeyer appears to be something of a legend amongst bikers, especially here.  We were told that he was a major force behind Bike Week in Daytona.  Well possibly, in that when he set up in 1994, he was involved in bringing it to Daytona Beach from its previous venue; but then it had been going since 1937, and of course he also made sure that many events are held at his newer Destination Daytona site too.

In any case, he died in 2009, whilst riding his bike to the Sturgis rally.  As is common in the States, he wasn't wearing a crash helmet.

But bikes aside, Daytona had quite a nice waterfront, with a few good places to eat and drink.  There was an Irish pub that was recommended to us by a guy in the garage, which had a great selection of beers both in the pub itself and in the attached shop.  We decided to buy a few that we could take back to the house and share with our host.

These went down pretty well with Georgy when we had them with the meal that he cooked for us one evening.

Overall we thought Daytona was a good town for a short visit, and if you time it right, there are quite a few little events during the year, apart from the races.