Parade Of Flowers

Carnaval du Nice

February 9, 2002

For 3 weeks in February Nice celebrates Carnaval. Carnaval is the same thing as what is celebrated in Rio De Janeiro, Venice, 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.

The theme of the Carnaval this year was "Roi du l'Euroland", or "The King of Euroland". The Parade Of Flowers runs up and down the Promenade des Anglaise, which runs right along the water. The Parade of Lights at night takes place it the Place de Massena, which is a huge square in the middle of Nice, just up from the beach.

Last year, we didn't get tickets to the grandstands in time and had to stand. But this year we ordered the tickets early and got to sit in the stands. Better yet, we ordered early enough that we had front row seats ! That was good because we could see easily and most of the women on the floats throw like girls and so the flowers didn't go very far and we caught a bunch of them. It was good for the boys, too, because they could see and the performers came right up to them several times. Patti's mom and sister Katie thoroughly enjoyed the parades. Here are the pictures and a short description of the fun. At the bottom is a link to pictures from the Parade Of Lights.

There are two parades on Saturday. The first is the Parade of Flowers, the second is the Parade of Lights, which happens at night. The Parade of Flowers features floats with lots of beautiful flowers, naturally, and the Carnaval queens who throw the flowers out to the crowds. Here is one picture of this type of float, but click here to see alot more.

As I mentioned, we had great seats, right in the front row. Here are the boys eagerly awaiting the start of the parade. Connor has caught a sprig of Mimosa. That little girl in the red fell in love with Connor and played with him. Ahh, another woman Hares-ified.

Also part of the parade is a bunch of other floats with musicians, balloons, and other assorted zaniness. Here we see a big blue bird and people inside some large inflated people balloons. They were walking on stilts.

A pink elephant with a Euro submarine behind it. Then a pretty bird. The tail feathers expanded and contracted.

A big Pink bird. The controllers would pull on the rope and the head would come down over the crowd. The came more people on stilts, this time looking like large caterpillars.

A group of people riding all kinds of strange bikes came by. Everything from a bike with 6 or 8 wheels, one that you pedal with your hands, a nun riding another bike. The second picture is of a copper horse that was the front of a float carrying a band that played while a bunch of Renaissance people acted all hoity-toity. Steve yelled "To the guillotine" in French and actually got a few laughs.

A rather pretty, bright orange dragon. The boys liked this one. The second picture is of the guy who probably got the biggest laughs, or, well, at least the biggest reaction. He was the guy that followed behind the horses and picked up the remains. Notice the content of the shovel. He ran up to us and asked if we would like a free gift. When everyone said "No !" he pretended to run up and then throw it up on everyone. He stopped at the last second. Then he held the shovel up over our heads and laughed. It was amusing.

Some more stilt people and a picture of I don't know what.

Finally, a nice picture of a marching band dressed up like Mongols playing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

And that concludes our show of the Parade of Flowers. But we still have lots more pictures from the Parade Of Lights.

Updated Sat Feb 16, 2002 9:05 CET