Street Parades

I went to Venice for two nights during Carnevale and stayed a week. The only reason I left was because it ended. I felt like a character in Ernest Hemmingway's "The Sun Also Rises", unable to decipher day from day or hour from hour.

My Venetian friends had invited me to come to Venice for Carnevale, saying I could use a studio apartment kept for family and friends. This was an offer I couldn't refuse, so I arranged my schedule to be in Venice the last week of Carnevale.

I'm sitting in a small cafe just off the Place Royale in Old Quebec sipping delicious cafe au lait and munching on a flaky croissant as snowflakes settle gently on the gathered snow mounds outside the door. The sub-freezing air outside frosts the cafe window and the wind blows in crisp gusts. Giant icicles hang from the eaves of centuries-old buildings along the narrow street. It's February--Carnaval time in Quebec.

But all that changes on the August bank holiday weekend as the Notting Hill Carnival - Europe's largest street party and second only in the world to Rio's Carnaval - swings and sways its way into W11.

Throw me something, Mister! Throw me something!' shout thousands of street revelers to costumed riders on larger than life floats as they shower glittering trinkets over the scrambling crowd below. Parades--60 formal ones at last count and many other informal ones--fantastic costumes, elegant balls and intricately designed tableaux, all essential parts of Mardi Gras, one of the wildest celebrations in the country.

Many people do not realize this, but Mardi Gras or rather, CARNIVAL, begins on January 6, the Epiphany, or Kings Day. The parties and parades begin on a very small but widespread scale until the climax on the Wednesday before Lent which is Fat Tuesday.

We saw first hand what the city fathers of New Orleans have been saying all along; Mardi Gras in New Orleans is mainly a family event

I awoke to the sound of firecrackers or explosives at the very least. This was merely pre-Fallas, a warm-up for the enormous celebration yet to come. The fiesta was a week away, yet very much on the minds of every Valencian.

Carnaval can be smelt and breathed in the air of Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere you look at Carnaval time you can see a Carnaval smile, you can hear a Carnaval samba beat and you can feel the Carnaval spirit.

The noise strikes you first. It's thick, heavy, relentless, a bone-rattling clamour that fills every available inch of airspace. It sounds like the march of a thousand jackbooted skeletons on their way to pay a visit on someone unpleasant, like the dentist or the taxman. Your brain takes it in as an all encompassing roar initially, but gradually the different rhythms and tempos become apparent. Over here an intricate staccato. Over there a dull thud. Right over there a mixture of the two but at twice the speed.

New Orleans is not the only home of Mardi Gras, there are four of them right here in the Philippines, each with their own unique style, culture and origins.

About a mile down the promenade from Brighton Pier, people congregate and gaze out over the silent beach towards the calm silhouette of a wicker king. They throng in the gathering darkness of the year's longest night, kids and adults jostling and stretching to get the best view. Except for their shuffling and whispering all you can here is the wind, and the slow ominous tattoo of the single drum.

Remember the joke about the three old ladies and the flasher? Two had a stroke, but the other one couldn't quite reach.... Well, the Hounen matsuri (festival), held annually at Komaki's Tagata-jinja shrine, provides plenty of opportunities for all present to get their hands on some outsized phalli.

On a warm April morning as I strolled through the San Marcos Gardens in Aquascalientes, a vendor beckoned me to come over and have my fortune told by a supposedly clairvoyant canary. I had my doubts, but he assured me that my future was in the cards. It seemed the canary was to select a card from a deck of Tarot cards. As luck would have it, the bird foretold happiness. This was the only luck I was to have in the next few days, as I experienced the San Marcos National Fair, the fair of fairs, which consumes the industrial city of Aquascalientes, located at the very center of Mexico, from the second week of April to the first week of May each year. It's an occasion for superlatives-the oldest, most famous and largest fair in all of Mexico.

The Russian Orthodox calendar includes four Lent-like fasts. The one coming before Easter is called the "Great Fast." Like the Catholic tradition, Russian Orthodoxy respects the need to enjoy oneself before a month of self-denial. In Russian, this week-long festival is called Maslenitsa.

The air hangs heavy any time of year in Veracruz, Mexico's hot and sultry principal port city. But the hearts of Jarochos, as the people of the city are known, are light, for winter means Carnaval, the wildest pre-Lenten celebration north of Rio.

The air is usually bitingly cold as each New Years Day, thousands don outlandish costumes and strut to the thumping beat of string bands in a colorful Philadelphia spectacle, The Mummers Parade. They're called Mummers (probably after the German word for disguise), they're mostly white, blue-collar guys who every January 1 - except 1919 and 1934 - have strutted up Broad Street decked out in wild array from head to spray-painted toe in one big absurd, hilarious, fraternal party.

As the jungle road wound its way from Salta, vegetation seemed more and more exhausted the higher we got, changing from moist greenery to brushy shrubs until only cacti survived around the commanding heights of the Andes cordillera. What was lost in flora was gained in colour, as a rocky rainbow of ochre, violet, grey, olive and amber replaced the green of the leaves.

As the southeast breeze kicks up outside Cape Town's Greenpoint Stadium, the sound of strumming banjos and banging drums reaches a crescendo, and thousands of merry minstrels hold onto their multicolored hats.

Cozumel is well known as one of the premier diving destinations in the world. But many do not know that Carnival Week on Cozumel is one of the most colorful and biggest celebrations in Mexico. It is a week of parades, dance, costumes, music and street carnivals.

It's Carnival Baby! That translates into a month long Hol-i-day for all people of St. Thomas. Carnival comes every April to this Virgin Island and with it are all the sights and sounds that comprise the Super Bowl of Caribbean Culture.

Visitors and locals scream, sing, shout and dance amid confetti and ribbons. Bands of all kinds play the infectious rhythms of the State of Sinaloa. And the food-oh, the food-camarones (shrimp) prepared in every way possible, washed down with ice cold Pacifico beer, for it's Carnaval Time, Mazatlán's biggest pachanga (fiesta).