Feb 18 2009
Mardi gras!
While Fat Tuesday is a religious celebration as well as Lent, Ash Wednesday and all that good stuff, Mardi Gras is internationally known as the Carnival season of the year.
Although I have never been to one in France (but in Cadiz, Spain) I hear France does burlesque parades for a week or so, especially in the South. Nice is the main place to be if you want to see a great one. And you get the French Riviera as a side dish so you’re better of going to Nice than going to Dunkerque (Carnival).
In the rest of France, not much is going on on the day of Fat Tuesday. Usually we bake “beignets” and “crêpes” and little kids dress up like for Halloween here and parade in the streets with their classmates during the day.
I did find a short blog post about it. It is from Kelby Carr:
You can attend Mardi Gras on the French Riviera. The Carnaval in Nice is a festive 10-day celebration featuring daily parades, concerts, street theater and more.
Dating back to the Middle Ages, people from around the globe have been descending on this gorgeous French Riviera city each year to cut loose. Find out how to plan your own visit for Nice Carnaval.
During Carnaval, the streets of Nice burst to life with a series of fun events. You can see the wintertime dip in the Mediterranean, or numerous parades.
The 2008 theme is Carnival “King of the Ratapignatas, Raminagrobis and other packs of masked rats”, where the alliteration of “ra” announces the year of the Rat, presenting strong symbols of Nice’s identity and population and the strength of the power through a modern and outrageous fantasy. The Ratapignata is a bat in the compendium of beasts in Nice.
If you want to attend next year’s carnaval, now is the time to start planning. It can be tough to reserve a room as it gets closer to the Carnaval season.
