Going to Carnaval took a lot of planning. I don't just mean finding someone to watch Reagan either. I mean, I had to prepare for this night. I had to try to stay up late (and by that, I mean past 10pm) for a week before the event so I wouldn't pass out just as it was getting started. See the samba schools don't start until 8pm and last until almost 6am. Yeah. I haven't kept those kind of hours in many years. And I'm okay with that. So, the day of, I had to take a nap too. Nope, I'm not embarrassed about it. Whatever. I have a four year old. There is no 'sleeping in' anymore.
So, I made it through the entire night (Yay for me). It was easy at first because it was so exciting and beautiful and fun and crazy! But by the time the last samba school started, I was pretty much done. I watched it, but just barely.
We went on the very last night of Carnaval for the "Parade of Champions". It consisted of the top 6 samba schools (starting with number 6 at 8pm and the best at the end of the night). Each samba school has 90 minutes to perform and make their way from one end of the sambadrome to the other. There are several elaborate floats, lots of samba, drumming bands, dancing ladies, and gorgeous costumes.
The sambadrome is huge! It can hold 90,000 people and I'm pretty sure it was full! Everyone seemed pretty happy to be there, especially the people in the parade. It was so hot and they walked by in these big, hot, heavy costumes but they (most of them) had huge smiles on their face and they were dancing with so much energy!
We also were fortunate enough to get front row seats. And I mean I high-fived several of the dancers and people marching in the parades as they went by. We were also sitting at the far end of the sambadrome and I managed to score a big headpiece from one of the hot, sweaty marchers. While this was pretty amazing feat, there were groups of people on either side of my group that must have collected 10-20 headpieces and other parts of costumes. I was just happy to get one to bring home and share with Reagan.
The hardest part of doing this post was figuring out which pictures to post. I must have taken several hundred (not to mention many videos). And here they are--
Enjoy :)
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| check out her wings! |
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| Those are gold-painted people on top of frothy glasses of beer |
