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Published: February 19th 2008
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Plaza Mayor
In Barcelona Spain is a good place to be for Carnaval, the go all out crazy party that happens right before the Lenten season begins. My friends and I decided that we should take part in this celebration. Cadiz is very famous for its celebration, but as we planned a little late, we chose to head to a slightly smaller party in the north, in Sitges (pronounce seat-gez). It's about 20km south of Barcelona, so we thought we'd hit two birds with one stone. It goes without saying, if you're going to any sort of carnaval celebration in Spain whether it be big or small, you MUST wear a costume .... you'd be out of place if you showed up with out one.
We arrived in Barcelona on a Thursday evening and thanks to some very resourceful friends in the group, arrived at our apartment with no problems. There were six of us and we were staying very much in style. We walked around the city and gathered last minute details and garnishes for our costumes for the next day and cooked in that night.
The next day we wandered around Barcelona and saw some really nice things. I'd been there
Catedral
One in the heart of the Barrio Gotic ... it opened 5 minutes after we walked away ... construction's still going on ... before, but for literally 24 hours so I soaked up everything I could with more appreciation and in a more paced manner. We walked around a great portion of the city and once our feet grew tired we returned to prepare ourselves for the night of carnavaling ahead.
The other two girls and myself had been shopping around Madrid before we left, so we thought we were cleverly dressed as the solar system. Myself as the moon, Nikki as the sun, and Cecilia as the stars ... this all unrolled from sparkly tights Cecilia had been given ... we pulled it off quite well. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into as none of us had done the carnaval bit before and we didn't really bother to check out any 'schedules'. We were just told people were dressed up on the train from Barcelona to Sitges and clearly enjoying themselves ... exactly what we expected. Our arrival on the train platform at 7PM warranted no such festivities ... we were the only ones in costumes, aside from the scattered toddlers who could not seem to part with their brightly colored neon wigs....only slightly awkward. It was
Argentina represent
There was a car show in front of the catedral ... I found this little slice of heritage representation ... this one's for you Mami nice to know that people on the train seemed to know where we were headed though...
We arrived 40 minutes later to a nonexistant carnaval scene .... I will give Sitges some props though, it would have been an incredible place to visit during the day time and even more so to visit during beach season. We come to find out the 'large' carnaval nights are typically held on Thursday and Sunday nights ... Ooooooppppss..... We make a split decision at dinner to stay and see what might occur though and little by little we see more costumed people walking around the streets. Our hopes start to rise.
After some time spent wandering the beach, we headed indoors where it would be warmer. We encountered many drunk, happy people and proceeded to have quite an evening. We finally made it to the main strip and it was like halloween all over again, but bigger and crazier. We spent the rest of the night hopping from place to place and seeing anything from smurfs to rastafarians to the Mario brothers. We had a grand time. We knew there was a train leaving at 445 and we planned to be
Catedral by the Mar
or by the sea ... prettttty on it, along with the majority of the rest of the Carnaval-ers. I discovered that Gatorade DOES indeed exist in Spain, and that pretty much made my night....simple things.
We slept pretty late the next day but when we did get up and around, we saw more of Barcelona. It was a colder day so we didn't do too much outside. We had a calm evening and packed & cleaned up so we could make a clean getaway the following morning.
It was a fun time and now I have experienced a slice of carnaval in Spain. Delightful. Things are going routinely here in Madrid, winter's finally shown its face bringing in clouds and cold weather. We've been fortunate to have a spring like January and start of February, but now that's gone away, sad. The students at my school are showing notable improvement which makes me feel better about my time here and eager about what they can accomplish the rest of this year. They also celebrated 'carnaval' on Ash Wednesday and came to school dressed up. They later burned paper sardines .... I never figured out exactly why, but I'm still looking into this ... I
1492
Columbus and I are pointed towards the New World ... miss you all muchos and hope you are all well!! Take care and let me know how you're doing!!! Besos.
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Maria Maddin
non-member comment
Happy Halloween or something....
Thanks for all the great photos and update on your adventures. Those kids are adorable! Looking forward to seeing you in less than a month....Spain here we come ready or not.