European Tryst: Carnaval!!!

So these past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity and before studio blows up next week, I will do my best to catch you all up on my adventures.

The weekend afternoon London began the long awaited Carnaval! Similar to Marti Gras back in the states culminating in an amazing part on Tuesday the 24th of February. The week was full of parades and parties and costumes. It was crazy walking around the town and see all the craziness in the middle of the day. It's like a second Halloween here with tons of adults and children all dressing up for the week. We all went to a parade on Saturday here in Barcelona where all of the neighborhoods would put together floats and then the public would vote on the best display. It was a very cool parade! I especially liked the amount of pride the people had in their specific neighborhood and you could just see how vastly different each one was with demographics and culture and style. Some of the floats were a bit disturbing. They would go from a happy float with a Peruvian theme to a demonic float with naked slaves covered in blood pulling the float with death rock music playing in the background...I almost cried.

erin and i waiting for the parade to begin

batman!

mom - will you please be one of these ladies next halloween?!

big money

a tree!

dancers

shock of color

nightmares....

this was the float right after the last...crazy

these people really like to get naked and paint themselves

On Sunday we took the train to Sitges, the Gay and Lesbian capital of Spain for their much anticipated parade. It was a gorgeous day so when we arrived we headed straight for the beach and spent the day there snacking and enjoying the sun. The beach there was the prettiest and nicest I had ever been on. Not a speck of trash where we were and the sand was ridiculously soft. The piers also had the huge cascading black rocks into the water that you could sit on and have the waves crash around you...perfection! We might have looked a bit silly though. The only other people in costume this early were children. I suppose all the older partiers were napping at this time of day...

This was pretty much my experience with Carnaval in Sitges though. Erin, Jeff and I decided we couldn't last until 5 in the morning when the trains began to run again so we took the train home that night which in order to get to before being blocked off completely by the parade, we didn't get to see a lick of it! I heard it was quite like the one in Barcelona but a bit more grown up and with even less clothes and way more cross dressers. Nothing new, haha.

ready to go!