Your nose tends to remember special aromas after only a few sniffs.

The sweet, easy blend of cotton candy, Marlboro lights, funnel cake and the unmistakable stench of stale-beer-soaked-beads tends to resonate a smell deep in your sniffer: the pure smell of Mardi Gras.

Now is the liveliest time of year, when all of Louisiana culminates into one week.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the poor little Johnny who can’t dance or if you’re just a Swire from Grand Chenier. The joie de vivre of Mardi Gras brings out the bon temps in all of us.

There is much to see, experience, drink, eat and enjoy.

There’s also more than one town to do all this carrying-on in.

My opinions on Mardi Gras have a strong bias for the heel end of the Boot. My dancing shoes enjoy the heel-stompin’ rhythms in southwest Louisiana, and I tend to stray from the toe-tapping tourist trap in New Orleans.

But there’s no reason to preach on why the big parades of New Orleans are simply not worth it, because in more cases than not, they will be worth the crowd, the nine-dollar hand grenades and a cocktail flu the following morning.

Certainly, if I weren’t from around here, I would answer the call of Bourbon Street, as well. I would join in the exodus and float the bar tar in the French Quarter. A wild time is a wild time anywhere.

Although, come Fat Tuesday, I’ll be back home in Lafayette, forgetting all the manners my mother taught me on account of a severe case of temporary amnesia.

For those looking to get cultured in a different manner, the carnival scene in Acadiana has a stroke of the big parades in New Orleans, but with a little bit more cracklin and boudin bite. Any of the large parades sponsored by the big krewes will host the same whimsical floats commandeered by masked men that resemble something out of Alice in Wonderland. However, the crowds are less dense and the accents a little flatter and a little thicker.

But the real culture shock is outside the big city.

Called the Courir de Mardi Gras — literally the “Run of Fat Tuesday” — it is drawn from much older and simpler traditions than the big show in New Orleans.

Out in the small towns of Mamou, Eunice and Iota, costumes are satirically medieval and the revelry is incredibly more bold than your typical Bourbon Street-silicon-show.

On a plight to steal ingredients for a communal gumbo, inebriated, untrained acrobats on horseback take to the dirt roads before the fog lifts. It always concludes famously with the chicken chase that would leave some animal rights activists setting out to raise cane.

It can all seem a bit aboriginal, and frankly as barbaric as ancient Rome. But when in Acadiana, do as Cajuns do, and you will not be disappointed.

I have been privileged to experience Mardi Gras in about as many different venues and methods as possible; from rubbing elbows with movers and shakers in Washington, D.C., to rolling around in the mud in Church Point, La.

However, and there’s not much deliberation, the best time I have each year is riding a float in the Lafayette Independent Parade. It’s a good mix of the bodacious floats you’ll see on Canal Street and the cotton trailers out on Main Street. So I guess it’s the best of both worlds.

Regardless of where the parade is, the thrills of watching and riding in a parade are about as similar as Vegas and Biloxi.

I would advise not to pass up an opportunity to ride.

There is an old rule of thumb we tend to follow on the float. We all know that drinking a beer while taking a boat ride is like drinking two beers on a bar stool. Consequently, when taking to a beer on a float, it’s a threefold effect to that bar stool perch.

Accordingly, I’d like for everyone to enjoy the one holiday the rest of the nation envies. Get deep into the festivities — no matter what end of the boot you’re in. This is most joyous time of year in Louisiana.

But it would be a shame to be stricken with a tragedy. So, please, Mardi Gras with responsibility.

Chris Ortte is 22-year-old political science senior from Lafayette.