Carnevale

Wow. Ieri, yesterday, some of us went to Viareggio to celebrate Carnevale. In Italy, the month of February is filled with parties and parades to celebrate the coming up of Fat Tuesday and the fasting period of Lent. It's basically like what I would assume Martis Gras is like in America, only much more family friendly. Certain cities are more well known for their festivities than others, and conveniently Tuscany's most popular Carnevale town is only an hour and a half train ride from us, so we took advantage and ventured out to Viareggio for the day. On Sundays the town puts on spectacular parades complete with people in colorful costumes, enourmous floats which artists work on year-round leading up to the event, more confetti than I've ever seen in my life (5 inches of confetti-snow flooding the ground), and of course masks and hats everywhere. It may sound kind of hectic and noisy if it's not your style, but together we really had a blast singing along with the music and dancing and being silly. At one point we jumped in front of our chosen favorite float, the peacock, and danced along with the costumed townies, a definite highlight of the day. Many of the floats are caricatures of political figures in and outside of Italy; there were figures of various popes of the past and also Obama and prime minister of France and the ex-prime of Italy. It's pretty interesting the way they are so open about their opinions and the truisms of political life. It's one thing to speak openly about what the political figures are doing wrong, and another thing entirely to build a 20 ft. statue of them and depict them burning in Hell.... BUT I thought it was interesting regardless.

We were delightfully surprised to find that Viareggio is also a beach! It actually looks very similar to Virginia Beach, same colored water and sand, and same atmosphere (makes sense). Jesica, who is also from the 757, and I felt right at home prancing through the sand and running from the waves--Sometimes when I describe my days I feel like I'm five years old.

This is how we felt about finding THE BEACH!