Carnaval

I've heard of Carnaval in Spain. I knew it was pretty fun and I should try to go.

Holy Moly.

Carnaval is said to be the best and biggest party out of all the crazy Spanish customs... and Spain has a lot of parties. (It's actually celebrated all over Europe, but each city/county has their own "flavor".) It's the "season" leading up to Lent, so it lasts about a week and a half. Spain is mostly Catholic, and historically Carnaval was the time to get rid of all the rich food and get the party out of your system before Lent started. They did this as a community, so everyone would bring out the meat, sugar, fats, dessert and share it. It's literally a botellon/discoteca in the streets.

The celebration itself is like Halloween, but better. I wish we went all out like this in the states. There was not a single person who didn't dress up. I have never seen such creative costumes before! There were eggs, superheros, bees, every character of a movie you've ever seen, oh my gosh. I tried to take as many pictures of cool costumes as possible so you'll see. The theme for the costumes are satires of current events poking fun at the government usually. So there were many people dressed up as Obama. Haha. Lots of them dressed up as policemen, and I was wondering what would happen if an actual policeman had a job to do. Thank goodness they kept it under control. I have never seen such controlled insanity before.

Our costumes! Deanna and I wore the same thing in different colors.

Here's all 3 of us girls! Nizar (the boy that came) is taking the picture. 

So four of us from the Residencía where I live decided go to together. We got tickets and jumped on the bus to Cadíz- a city about 4 hours away.

We got to the city at 5 and people had already started gathering in the streets! We walked around for a while checking out the city and the performances in the plazas. The Cadíz Carnaval is also known for music. There were performances in all of the plazas, and most of the groups work all year on them. Again, the theme is to poke fun at daily life, politics, or events. We got to see a few, and they were really good- very animated and fun to watch. Also in the music realm, they make portable speakers and push them through the city. I'm not kidding! They had these contraptions on a cart that blared music and they just moved them from plaza to plaza!

One of the satirical music performances. It's just a stage set up in the middle of a plaza.

Then we decided to soak up the last rays of sun before the sun went down and it got cold! Cadíz is on the coast so we got to see the beach. It was beautiful! The city itself is actually gorgeous. Granada has a lot of historical stuff, but Cadíz is relatively modern. Too bad it's the #1 city in Spain for unemployment, followed by Granada.

The sunset was so pretty!

There were a lot of people out to watch the sunset too.

The coast.

We made it back into the city center where all the people started gathering. It was like, once the sun went down it was a free for all! The bars and restaurants closed so we couldn't use the bathrooms, but they had set up port-a-pottys (which were disgusting).

City center.

People started gathering before it was even dark!

There were thousands of people in this one plaza! The entire city comes out to celebrate. Moving was impossible.

Can it get more beautiful? Even with all the people, the city is amazing.

So in order to practice spanish and a desire to meet as many people as possible, we decided to find and take pictures with all the people with the coolest costumes... which turned into finding the most attractive men. BUT it was actually a great conversation starter and I talked to soooooo many people about their costumes, where they were from, what they studied/did for work, all sorts of stuff. And this was a total survival situation, I shamelessly solicited pictures for us girls :)

I'm not sure if these guys were clowns or painters?

Soccer player. He was one of my favorites! He was from Italy studying in Sevilla, Spain and he spoke a little bit of English.

Bees. The guy on the left is a massage/physical therapist, and the guy on the right is a doctor.

Superheros

Pilots. Honestly, this is epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Wow.

It's a party from dusk till dawn, and our bus didn't leave until 6am! We were exhausted. We slept all the way home and then crawled into bed at noon. It was so much fun though, definitely an experience!