WHAT a city, " says the cab driver en route from Louis Armstrong Airport to my hotel in the French Quarter.

"This city don't sleep. If you're not having a party for something, something's wrong."

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If New Orleans is party central, USA, then Mardi Gras is the one celebration everyone turns out for.

I am staying at prestigious Soniat House. Built in 1830 by a Mississippi plantation owner, it retains the Creole atmosphere of old New Orleans with four-poster beds and antiques. A courtyard garden dense with fragrant magnolia, ginger and sweet olive is the perfect spot for a breakfast of freshly baked biscuits (what we would call scones) and café au lait.

Situated at the quieter end of Chartres Street, the hotel provides respite from the singing, costumed, painted, bejewelled party that continues from the moment I hit the streets on Friday until the stroke of midnight on Ash Wednesday.

Wrought iron balconies provide the perfect vantage point to watch revellers returning from downtown parades.

There are several ways to experience Mardi Gras. The big parades that roll through the city centre in the mornings and early evenings with enormous floats representing each of the city's "krewes" are a must-see.

Krewes are social organisations that evolved from private social clubs. They take their names from mythological characters such as Proteus, the Mistik Krewer of Bacchus and Endymion.

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The oldest, Comus, dates back to 1857.
Singer Harry Connick Jr founded the most recent, Orpheus, in 1993.

Fantastically costumed and masked men and women throw strings of coloured beads, stuffed toys, plastic chalices and "gold" coins from the slow-moving floats into the crowds.
Mardi Gras beads and necklaces come in three colours: purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power.
For the night-time parade on Monday, known as Lundi Gras, I make my way along St Charles Avenue to the Uptown district where families line the parade routes with deckchairs, picnic tables and ladders for children to get a better view and catch flying trinkets.

After dark the spectacular flambeaux (flaming torches) are lit and carried by young men to light the parade's route, a tradition dating back to the 18th century. I stagger back to my hotel with my haul of beads, stuffed seahorses and fuzzy footballs like a pirate with looted treasure.

The next morning after a breakfast of doughnut-like beignets at the Café du Monde on the edge of the Quarter I head straight for the first parade of Tuesday, Mardi Gras morning. This is the Zulu krewe parade on Canal Street, the thoroughfare that bisects the city.

After an hour or so trying to compete with a 7ft guy who catches everything that falls in our vicinity, I retreat to the Quarter for the costume parade.
More manageable and less tiring than the float parades, this procession is popular with locals.

Participants gather at around 11am and slowly and noisily make their way through the streets.

There are no beads or trinkets and everyone is on foot but the costumes, many homemade and exquisitely constructed, are sensational. One man is dressed as the giant gold skeleton of a cow, 10ft tall.

There are vampire girls and sea monsters, gods and goddesses of every denomination and religion, animals, vegetables and minerals, angels and demons.
Some brave souls wear more make-up than clothing. The parade continues well into the night. In need of a pit stop I grab one of the best burgers I've ever eaten at Coop's Place bar on Decatur Street where legend has it Paul Newman used to hang out.

I poke my head into the Krazy Korner where a well-upholstered lady sings jazz gospel and sounds like a cross between Etta James and Aretha Franklin before grabbing an Abita Light (Louisiana's best-known beer) in a bar where a rock and roll band is delivering Guns 'N' Roses songs that sound better than the originals. Music is everywhere: from blues to cajun, rock to zydeco, jazz ancient to jazz nouveau.

6S THE sun goes down Mardi Gras reaches its zenith. I join the heaving throng of revellers on famous Bourbon Street.

New Orleans is the only city in America where you can drink openly (one of the reasons behind its nickname the Big Easy) on the street and residents and tourists alike take advantage of the liberal laws, parading up and down the Quarter with bucketsized cups of beer or one of the many lethal cocktails with names such as Hurricane or Hand Grenade.

The crowds in the street scream to revellers on balconies for more beads although there is a forfeit. Those wishing for beads on Bourbon Street are encouraged to reveal some part of their anatomy before being thrown their prize.

In open defiance of the decadence around them, a group of grim-looking men and women hold aloft signs railing against everything from abortionists to used car dealers with admonitions such as "Wild Girls Are Going To Hell!"

When a fire breaks out in one of the old wooden houses in Bourbon Street the partygoers in a nearby bar spill on to the street as the DJ plays a song called The Roof Is On Fire until the fire engines arrive. Having assured myself nobody has been hurt I return to the throng. Neither a house fire nor hellfire is going to stop the party. This is New Orleans. This is Mardi Gras.

GETTING THERE:

Thomas Cook Signature (0844 879 8014/tcsignature.com) offers seven nights at the Astor Crowne Plaza hotel, New Orleans, from £1,026pp (two sharing), room only, includes return flights from Heathrow.

For departures February and March 2012. Soniat House (dialling from the UK: 001 504 522 0570/ soniathouse.com) offers doubles from £147 per night (two sharing), B&B. New Orleans CVB (020 8460 8473/www.neworleanscvb.com)