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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (Reuters) - Mardi Gras revelers packed New Orleans on Saturday as large crowds turned out to watch parades and fill the French Quarter in what many viewed as another step in the long recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

Partiers, most with drink in hand, lined the sidewalks along parade routes, shouting and dancing while masked "krewe" members on passing floats tossed out beads and other trinkets in a celebration now 151 years old in New Orleans.

Local officials said hotels were near capacity and flights into the city full. Bars and restaurants reported strong business while streets in the city center were jammed with traffic.

All in all, locals said, it looked and felt more like a normal Mardi Gras than the 2006 scaled-down version, which was the first after Katrina flooded most of the city and killed 1,300 people in August 2005.

"I had a friend who rode on a float last night, and she said looking down at all the people and the fun they were having, she felt like it was back," said Joi Manthey, a chaplain for riverboat pilots.

Attendance this year is expected to be above last year, when estimates ranged as low as 400,000, but still below the pre-storm level of about 1 million people.

Numbers do not tell the full story of Mardi Gras, locals say. More important is its role in the self-image and psyche of the city.

Despite opposition from some who believed the city-wide party in 2006 was inappropriate amidst the devastation of Katrina, many locals viewed it as a way of showing the world New Orleans would survive.

FINDING OLD FRIENDS

They said Mardi Gras played a vital role in reuniting a population that had been dispersed by the storm. Much of New Orleans is still in ruins and less than half of the pre-storm population of 480,000 has returned

But many people came back for Mardi Gras in 2006 and again this year.

"Last year was like a group therapy session for everybody from New Orleans, it was a way to reconnect," Manthey said. "You could go find your friends because families watch the parades from the same place every year, and you could find out how they were and where they were."

This year, said graduate student David Parker, it looked like more non-New Orleans people had come back to Mardi Gras, too.

"Last year, it was more intimate. It felt like 'our' party, this year it's 'a' party again," he said.

Attorney Donna Fraiche, standing in front of her genteel Uptown home, said Mardi Gras this year represented a return to "the new normal" in the still-damaged city, and was a precursor of better days.

"Last year was about survival, this year it's resilience," she said. "This city will come back."