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As one happy group of purple-clad visitors wraps up its triumphant visit to New Orleans, another group is currently descending on The Big Easy in advance of Mardi Gras 2013. These travelers are asking a lot of questions: What's the Mardi Gras parade schedule? (It's right here.) Why does everyone on the floats wear masks? (It's the law.) How many beads do you think I'll be able to amass? (A lot.)

Mardi Gras isn't only about topless girls and drunken antics on New Orleans' Bourbon Street – though there's definitely plenty of that among the city's tourist population. It's also about spending time with family and friends, putting work on hold, and forgetting about life's hardships, if only for a few days. Children joined drunken partiers along the parade route, though few could be found in the French Quarter, with the occasional youngster tossing beads from a balcony.

Tourists visiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras this week may have spotted CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and TV host Kelly Ripa on-board a float during Sunday night's Endymion parade – the pair served as grand marshals for the famous parade, which often features celebrities.

Hundreds, if not thousands of musicians, from Louis Armstrong to Louie Prima have passed through the New Orleans music scene over the years, and there isn't another city in the country whose jazz heritage is as rich and vibrant. It's easy to think of jazz as a staid and mouldering tradition – it's certainly not a huge part of mainstream music consciousness anymore – but New Orleans' traditional jazz foundations mix with blues, hip-hop and indie rock in exciting and inventive ways that prove that jazz is not only alive and kicking, but finding a comfortable place amid its genre peers in the Crescent City.

The square is festooned with green, gold and purple bric-a-brac, a sprightly Basin City blues fills your ears, and the air is rich with the smell of spicy andouille sausage and seafood gumbo, but no, you're not in New Orleans – you're at Universal Studios' Mardi Gras in Orlando.