Carnaval du Nice

February 27, 2001

For 3 weeks in February Nice celebrates Carnaval. Carnaval is the same thing as what is celebrated in Rio De Janeiro and New Orleans, culminating in Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. The Nice celebration is said to be the third biggest in the world, behind Venice and Rio. The celebration consists of parades with floats, marching bands, and other assorted "things" that you have to see to know what it is ! Some of the parades are during the day, others at night with lots of lights. Then their is a big fireworks show on Mardi Gras. Everyone is supposed to where a mask and a silly hat. We just wore silly hats. It's also very hard to get into the parades. You can buy tickets for the grandstand, but those sell out quickly. So you have to buy a ticket into the standing area, which is where we were. It wasn't so bad, and for the night parade, it was actually better because you stood right up against the street as the floats passed by and you could reach out and touch them and squirt silly string at the people in costume.  When the last float came by we jumped out into the road and followed behind the float with all the other spectators who had the same idea. The pictures will tell the rest of the story.

Just like the major parades in the US, balloons play a major part in the Carnaval parade. Here are some pictures of all the different balloons. The first picture is a fish, the second a giant grasshopper with another fish behind it, the third a giant snake. All the balloons are very, very colorful. The balloons are pulled by people who maneuver the cables so that the balloons float out over the crowd. You can reach up and touch them, as you can see in the bottom right photo. Jeff didn't like them getting this close to him.

Since this is a French parade the different entrants have a little more pizzazz or élan than you would see elsewhere. They don't just do clowns, the clowns have to be very avant garde. You can see what I mean from the four pictures below. Don't ask what these guys are, no one knows.

The floats themselves are covered in all kinds of flowers that the people on the floats throw out to people in the crowd. The floats are beautiful with all the flowers. Here are four pictures of the different floats. The top right picture actually has a woman sitting behind the head who threw out flowers to everyone. The bottom left float wasn't covered in flowers, but the people were dressed up pretty wild.

What parade would be complete without beauty queens on the floats ? Here are two pictures of the queens. In the first picture, Miss Carnaval du Nice 2001 is in the middle. The beauty on the left is throwing Steve some flowers because he yelled out "Je t'aime" at her, which is more civil than what he usually yells. You can see the flowers in flight.

And here are some miscellaneous pictures from the Carnaval. One of the floats was a giant mechanical monster that shot confetti out of its mouth at everyone in the crowd. It was Jeff's favorite. You can see this in the first two photos. The third photo is of a marching band going by, with the bass drum player looking at Steve because he yelled out the magic "Je t'aime" words again.

Updated March 17, 2001