Pre-Party Party

We went down to Galveston on Thursday to see what we could see. Unfortunately, it was cold and windy - not at all pleasant for strolling the beach, so we headed into historic downtown and found that there were to be Mardi Gras "first weekend" festivities - so we stayed.

Friday we cruised down to the Southwest end of the island and checked out all of the houses - they are all built on raised pylons. It was a bit weird to see Texas style suburb housing divisions, except elevated. We saw a few interesting birds, but it was not a nice day so we didn't get out and walk the beach.

At 3:00PM we headed into old town and decided to hang out for happy hour. It was a bit weird because everyone was ready for a party, but no one was there - very strange feeling.

We alternated between JuJu's bar and Starbucks for the evening until things started to pick up. I went out at about 6:30 and took these shots of the almost deserted town and I got a picture of early partiers throwing me my first beads.

The action picked up and soon EVERY ONE was in the street yelling up at the balconies for beads!

It was quite strange to stand back and watch the crowd. There was a lot of general yelling and whistling and every once in a while a pocket would form. A young woman or two would suddenly become completely surrounded by a huge mass of guys shoving cameras and camcorders at them because they got the feeling that they were about to flash for a particularly enticing string of beads. It was really pretty weird. Men who you would not normally think of as depraved pervs ran out of nowhere and surrounded these women on the off chance that they would get to capture a picture of them flashing their breasts at the balcony. Sometimes they did. The men would then disperse and look for another likely flasher. Meanwhile, the woman who flashed the balcony usually did not get the beads she was after because there were too many people crowded around her and they were snatched away while she was putting her chest to rights.

Needless to say, John and I went with the shouting, yelling and smiling method rather than the flashing method and we managed to score a HEFTY amount of beads.

John pleading for beads.

We went into Poor Michael's for Blues and Brews and had a fabulous time listening to the band and watching the people.

It was a great way to get a little taste of what we will be doing later this week when we hit New Orleans.