Parade Of Lights

Carnaval du Nice

February 9, 2002

The Parade Of Lights is the second parade on Saturdays, following the Parade Of Flowers. There are quite a few hours between the two parades. Since we have two small children, one who needs a nap to stay civilized, and two Californians with jet lag, we rented a hotel room right near the parade. We retired to the room for a few hours rest before heading out for dinner and the second parade. The best part was we found a good Mexican restaurant in Nice run by a guy from Texas ! For this parade we decided to be in the standing section, which really means down in the street with the parade itself. This is a lot of fun because the floats come right by and you can reach out and touch them. The parade marchers come right up to you. So it is more fun than sitting in the stands.

Here is a picture of Patti and Jeff with Grammie and Aunt Katie. This is in the foyer of the hotel. Then we have a picture of the Connor man covered in a bit of confetti. 

The whole purpose of the Light Parade seems to be allowing people to squirt vast and huge quantities of silly string everywhere you could possibly imagine. You can see it all on the street behind Connor, above. In fact, here is a picture of Jeff zapping me with some silly string. Then a picture of everyone waiting patiently for the start.

Really, the purpose of the parade is to show off a bunch of very strange costumed people, even stranger floats that you have no idea what the motivation behind it is, and enormous display of lights. First, here are some picture of the huge light displays they erect around the Place de Massena.

Here are some pictures of all the wacky costumes. First is a person dressed as a giant Euro, followed by some startled looking pigs. They probably just saw how long the Euro has sunk against the dollar.

I have no idea what these are supposed to be.

The other interesting thing, but strange, are the floats. Some are the same as the floats from the Parade of Flowers, but most are unique to this parade. Who knows why this guy is on all fours with no pants on !! 

Here is the float with the King of Euroland on it himself.

Wonder Woman, I'd guess. Notice all the Euro signs hanging overhead.

This was the same dinosaur from the Flower parade.

We mentioned how the goal of the parade seemed to be shooting as much silly string as possible. Here is a float covered in the stuff.

Updated Sat Feb 16, 2002 10:01 CET