Fat Tuesday celebrations cap off Mardi Gras 2017 in New Orleans

The streets of New Orleans were filled Tuesday with costumed revelers, dazzling floats featuring kings and queens, and people of all ages screaming for trinkets and beads. Lots of beads.

Tuesday marks the culmination of the Carnival season, which started Jan. 6.

The biggest parades take place along the St. Charles Avenue parade route, where the Krewe of Zulu kicks off the morning’s parades and is followed by the Krewe of Rex.

Families, tourists and locals set up their chairs and ladders early to get a good seat for catching the trinkets thrown by riders on the floats. The hand-crafted coconuts handed out by members of Zulu are particularly sought-after.

In another part of the city, people dressed in elaborate costumes take part in the St. Anne’s parade — an eclectic walking parade that starts in the Bywater and Marigny neighborhoods and ends in the French Quarter.

Members of various Mardi Gras Indian tribes — they’re African-American rather than Native American — will also be out on the streets in hand-sewn, beaded and feathered outfits that they have been working on for months.

At the stroke of midnight, police on horseback do a ceremonial clearing of revelers on Bourbon Street to mark the formal end of the Carnival season before Lent begins Wednesday. The word “carnival” comes from the Latin words meaning “farewell to flesh,” and was originally a time to revel and to use up all the fat and meat in the larder before the austerities of Lent.

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