From morning to Midnights, here’s what it was like when Taylor Swift returned to NOLA

They came by the hundreds in sequined skirts and rhinestone boots, a crowd mostly of women and girls, mothers and wide-eyed daughters, all to hear Taylor Swift .

“Well hello New Orleans,” Swift told fans Friday night.

The crowd roared.

After three-and-a-half hours of music , they barely seemed tired.

Friday was the first of three marathon shows this weekend in New Orleans — one of Swift’s final stops on a tour that has thrust the singer to new kind of fame and devotion that many fans call unparalleled in this century.

The Caesar’s Superdome was packed. So was Champion’s Square, just outside, where fans waited in 40-minute lines to buy $75 Taylor Swift sweatshirts, trade Taylor Swift friendship bracelets and pose for photos in Taylor Swift inspired outfits.

“The energy here is awesome,” said Mia Minnick , who drove with friends from Tennessee on Thursday to a home she is renting this weekend in Pass Christian . The group could find no New Orleans hotels. But Minnick said she was too thrilled with the crowds to mind the drive back to Mississippi: “I‘ve never run into anybody who wasn’t super, super nice.”

Swift pays tribute

Fans stayed standing the whole show. Swift began her set belting “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” and “Cruel Summer” from her album, “Lover.” Then she paused.

“I’ve been having more fun on this tour than I’ve ever had in my entire life,” she told the crowd between songs. “You’ve turned this tour into something completely unrecognizable. You’ve created this mass movement of joy.”

Swift, 34, also praised New Orleans . After a summer touring in Europe, she said, she The Eras Tour needed to end in “the most fun cities.”

“We’ve got to come see you,” she said, “in beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana.”

Swift played two surprise songs : a mix of “Our Song” and “Call It What You Want” and mashup of “The Black Dog” and “Haunted.”

Swift said the songs were a return to her country roots, and that she chose them for New Orleans because she has been playing in Louisiana since she was 15.

Swift changes outfits for each era in her show. Her “1989” outfit was also a nod to the region: She wore a purple top, gold skirt and green boots, bedazzled in the colors of Mardi Gras.

NOLA is bustling

The city was packed all day. Restaurants blasted Swifts songs onto the street. So did pedicabs. So many fans packed the Holiday Inn that a wait for one elevator lasted over 15 minutes.

Rebecca Fox, a super Swiftie from Metairie, Louisiana, secured a 191-room block at the hotel. Swift fans renamed the Holiday Inn “Holiday House,” for the weekend in honor of a home with the same name Swift owns in Rhode Island.

“We’ve been doing exactly what Taylor told us to do,” Fox said Friday morning, as she prepped for a Swift-themed talent show. “You can’t go too big.”

Krislyn Branford, who serves in the Air National Guard in Gulfport, drove in Friday with her friend, Lauren Gaters, and several other fans who booked a Scottish chauffeur service. Branford, who was dressed in a bedazzled hoodie, and Gaters, who was dressed in a long yellow dress and cape, stood in the long merchandise lines, hoping to score a Taylor Swift crewneck.

Other fans could hardly believe it.

“She’s going to be right there,” a woman dressed in a red shirt and hat told a loved one over FaceTime as she walked across the floor, before Swift appeared onstage.

“I gotta go,” she said, quickly. “We’re taking pictures.”

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