One of the big traditions in Europe is known as Carnivale. It is a celebration marking the beginning of lent, very similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is a HUGE street party with parades, costumes, drinking, glitter, feathers, dances ect. I bought a couple of fun pieces and threw together a ridiculous outfit for this night! It is similar to Halloween in the United States, but people tend to dress more in Mardi Gras attire with masks, beads and LOTS of glitter!
A group of friends and I took a bus to Sitges through Bus2Alps (an amazing travel company) about an hour outside of Barcelona where we experienced the craziness! The streets were packed, the ground covered in confetti and glitter and music and drums playing everywhere! Parades were coming from every direction and occupying all of the small side streets of Sitges! It was nuts!
Our bus left at 2:00 am, but of course we managed to miss the bus and found ourselves stuck in Sitges until 4:30 am! We were then forced to take the train home where we realized we had lost our cameras in Sitges! (totally bummed about this seeing as how it was my third camera of the trip and my London pictures had not been uploaded yet ) Carnivale is known for gypsies and pick-pocketers so this really was not uncommon to happen in Sitges! I had a friend lose her credit card, camera and both her American and Spanish phone! But we made it back safe and spent the whole next day recovering from the crazy Sitges experience!
I would definitely recommend everyone that is in Europe in the Spring to try to make it to a Carnivale celebration! It seriously is unlike anything you have ever seen before and a good cultural experience to have! There are many locations for these festivals so with a little research I am sure you could find one near you!
Holy Sitges! What a good night!!
No comments:
Post a Comment