Merry Christmas; New Orleans Celebration in the Oaks

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, or Happy Holidays!

To mark the occasion, here’s a post out of sequence. We stayed in New Orleans around Thanksgiving this year, and while there attended the New Orleans City Park’s Celebration in the Oaks holiday lights. The blog posts about New Orleans aren’t scheduled to be published until February (yes, I’m rather behind; we do things faster than I can post about them!). But I figured I could bring this one forward to a more appropriate time.

This holiday celebration has driving and walking options; we did both. Here’s a map of the routes:

We started with the driving portion, where one drives along roads in the park that have holiday light decorations:

A timelapse video from my 360 camera of the drive:

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We then parked at the mini golf in the park, and played a round (Jenn won):

Then proceeded to the walking part, wandering around the New Orleans Botanical Garden and environs, with lots of holiday lights:

Jenn reaching for a star:

A cute narrated Cajun Night Before Christmas story, with synchronized lights:

An amusing New Orleans variation of 12 Days of Christmas:

Model trains:

Amusement park rides were also included, but we didn’t participate in any (considered the train, but it was full, and the carousel, but didn’t want to wait):

It is a nice historical carousel, though:

A fun festive evening. Always interesting to see local variations of holiday lights.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!