Carnaval de Nice

How can I begin to describe the Carnaval de Nice? For starters, it ended last week, so unfortunately I am a bit late in posting this. But no worries, it will still be the same carnival next year. The theme for the carnival was: Le roi de la planète blue, which translates into "the King of the Blue Planet (Earth)." The carnival itself was a combination of Macy's Day Parade meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Alice in Wonderland meets Cirque du Soleil. Quite the combination! It was quite the show.

Our program took us to Nice pretty early on a Sunday morning, and the bus ride to the region of Les Alpes Maritimes was only about an hour and a half. We got dropped off next to... THE BEACH! Unfortunately it is a rock beach and was only about 50 degrees F when we arrived, so it was no Ocean City. But I did touch the water (Mediterranean) and pick up some neat rocks.

BEACH!

Outside of the carnival there were street performers, floats, hair stylists creating strange hair-do's, people doing face painting, there were a bunch of grunge drummers wearing red kilts, and there was even a collection of wind catchers made from kite fabric (I don't really know how to explain these... see picture). For the carnival, we were given a giant bag of confetti (there is still confetti all over our auberge and in random pockets in my jacket) and silly string (in french: bombe).

Wind-Catchers?

The actual carnival started around 2, 2:30. We grabbed a great spot in the front, where the parade started, before it hit the bleachers. It was marvelous. The entire show was so much fun. We even got into a silly-string war with some random French people. They weren't very nice, because we would try to take pictures, and they would spray us with silly string. In our faces! But no worries, we got them back. The carnival lasted about 2 hours, after which me, Eszter and Jeff congratulated ourselves for surviving by getting some gelato, and taking a walk along la Rue des Anglais (yes, it was really called that--its the 'Boardwalk'). We left for Aix around 5, got back, and voila. Ate dinner at Bistro Romain (so delish) and passed out, ready for another week in Aix!

À bientôt!

Mechanical T-Rex Float

Creepy Float

The View

Mother Earth?