Cádiz, Spain
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
How did we even survive this?! So Carnaval is roughly equivalent to Mardi Gras in the United States. It's a week long festival before Lent starts, but we only went for one night. We went with DiscoverSevilla and they took 5 buses down, and everybody wears costumes. I was kind of like a little butterfly, it wasn't much of a costume but oh well. I didn't want to spend much money. It was funny because as I was leaving the house Manuel called me an angel, Irene called me a fairy, and Valentina called me a butterfly! So you get the picture. So the buses didn't even leave until 10 at night because it only takes about 2 hours to get to
Cádiz, and typical of the Spanish lifestyle, the party doesn't really get started until after 1 am anyway. Right when we drove into the city we knew we were in for a good time because there were people everywhere and lights all over the streets. We literally just got dropped off into this mass of people so we just started following the crowd. The atmosphere was so crazy it's hard to describe with just words
. Everyone was singing and dancing and lot of people were keeping a beat with drums. Cars would try to get through, which was pretty much a lost cause, so they would just stop and crank up their music and honk along to the music! There were also some stages around with little shows on them, although a lot of them were drag shows. Spanish people are really into the gay culture, which is cool, but I've never figured out why. So everyone is just drinking outside so we stopped into a bar to get our share as well. They sold big jugs of Coke, a bottle of whiskey, ice, and four plastic glasses to you for 18 euroso we bought that to share amongst our friends. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it seriously is really common to just mix drinks in the street over here, they call it "botellóna". So for most of the night we just wandered around and danced and looked at costumes and stuff, it was really fun. Although by 4 am we started to get tired and cold, but we couldn't get back on the buses until 5 am. Everybody just passed out on the bus ride home, except for me of course, because I can't sleep in any kind of vertical position, but oh well. So Carnaval was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a very good representation of the Spanish love of the fiesta.
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