Carnaval de Cádiz

Hola chic@s, hope you had a nice weekend. On Saturday night a group of us joined a We Love Spain (an events company here) trip down to Cádiz for the last night of Carnaval. Before this year I thought this week long festival to mark the beginning of Lent was something they only did in Germany because we learned about it in school but it seems it is a very big deal here as well. Remember at Halloween when I was confused about the lack of effort over costumes? It seems that Carnaval is pretty much the rest of Europe's answer to Halloween, in October you just wear scary costumes but you save your cute/funny/topical ones for springtime. It's a fun tradition which I kind of wish Ireland had (I love dressing up) but I'm not sure how well it would work for us.

We got into the town at about 10 and were left to our own devices until we were picked up at 5am the next morning. For a while it seemed like the night would drag on, at 12 it was already a bit cold and we were a bit bored, but we made our way back to the centre and just embraced how everyone else was doing things. Carnaval is very much a street/outdoors festival, as in, you stand in the street and drink. There didn't seem to be much else going on, no music or entertainment. This is why I'm not sure how well it would work in Ireland, vastly differing drink cultures had me imagining how much more aggressive and out of control people there might be at a similar celebration in Dublin, given the lack of security or distraction. In fact I don't think I saw a single (real) police officer all night, and only one ambulance. Fair play Spain. That's not to say there weren't people who 'couldn't hack the sesh', as it were, but all in all it was a fun atmosphere and nothing unsafe about it. Lovely.

Some sort of huge Weirdo Club meeting.

The costumes were great, everyone seemed to make an effort (no swathes of girls in cat ears and guys wearing "nudist on strike" signs here). We saw clowns, soldiers (lots of them), nuns, popes, pirates, matadors, burritos, firemen, babies and the entire cast of Toy Story. The lack of indoor places to sit down and have a rest, a drink, or something to eat meant that if you weren't wearing warm enough clothes you could easily get cold sitting still. The guys wearing onesies had the right idea.

still not sure what he was meant to be

All in all it was a great night, and Cádiz looks like it's a very pretty place. I'm looking forward to going back during the day when there isn't rubbish everywhere and the streets don't smell of wee.

Besos x