Carnevale? Or Oakland Homecoming Parade?

Since I missed Carnevale at Viareggio, we stayed in Florence to check out the Carnevale celebration here. I had checked out the Piazza where the festivities were going to be held a few days before. After seeing Shannon and Marla's pictures, I was really excited to see Florence's version.

Julia and I got to the Piazza Ognissanti a little later than we intended to, and there wasn't much going on. To be perfectly honest, the portion of the parade that we were watching at the Piazza could have fit into the Homecoming parade in Oakland- some people, in really random attire (not matching at all- some in t-shirts, some in what appeared to be bad Halloween costumes, etc.) dancing behind a truck with a cd player. Not exactly the grand floats and elaborate costumes from the Viareggio pictures.

Unimpressed, we decided to leave, but on our way back, we met up with the beginning of the parade, which was WAY better than then ending we caught at Ognissanti. It still wasn't the grandiose parade that we could have seen in Viareggio or Venice, but it still pretty cool. How the parade worked was there were groups of people representing different countries, dressed in customary attire and dancing. And apparently the beginning groups were the best.


These guys started the parade, representing the city of Florence, I guess. (see the red Fleur de Lis- that's the official symbol of Florence).

Then there were some people dressed in costumes from....well, I have no idea what time period this would be from.....Old....we'll go with that. :) (and none of them looked very happy, lol)


And then here are some of the highlights from the other groups:


This guy was a little scary to be honest...


Colombia went all out- they had like 5 different groups!


Don't remember where these guys were from, but they were doing a really cool dance.


As were these folks...


Mariachi! :)



The Carnevale Fiorentina was admittedly disappointing, but it was still kind of cool, and we had a good time.
Ciao!