Carnaval in Cádiz

This past weekend we went with a group travel agency down to Cadiz, located in the Southwest tip of Spain right on the ocean! Every year around this time they have their Carnaval celebrations, which is similar to Mardi Gras in the states. Everyone gets dressed up in crazy costumes and stays out walking in the streets all night long. I'd never even experienced Mardi Gras before so this was a whole new experience for me on many accounts. The group we went with was with about 200, mainly students and mainly from my school, left on buses down to Cadiz EARLY friday morning. We were supposed to leave at 8am, but because people can't be on time we didn't actually end up leaving until about 8:45, already a sign it was going to be a long day. Most people were way too excited to sleep and the buses were pretty loud for the first couple of hours. We made our first stop after about 2 1/2 hours which were the longest 2 1/2 hours of my life considering I was about to pee my pants as usual. But, finally made a much needed stop for a way too long 40 minutes, we were all eager to get down there! We were kept occupied by movies at least on the way down which definitly helped pass the time. We finally made it into Cadiz at about 5 pm, after two other LONG stops. I guess they were necessary for the amount of people we had, but I was beginning to lose it on that bus. We all got checked into our hotel quickly, which was a beautiful resort only 5 minutes from the ocean. It was definitly a treat to stay in such a nice place with a huge shower and although there were 4 of us to a room we all got our own beds. That night the group had rented out a club for our group to go to so we only had minimal time to rest a little and get settled before the night. We left at about 10, which is early on Spanish times, but had a fun night dancing with friends and decided to come home early, for Spaniards, at about 1am to be fully rested for the next days adventure. We got free breakfast and since we're living on a dime over here we made sure to set alarms to wake up for this treat. It was so worth it, we were overwhelmed with all our options: any type of fruit you can imagine, eggs, every type of bread I'd ever seen, muesli (my new obsession- minus the dried fruit), cereal, yogurt, pastries, crepes, and more that I can't even remember. I definitly succeeded in eating my body weight because I was not taking this opportunity for granted. We all stoked up on treats for the rest of the day then went back to bed. It was pretty rainy and cold, well in the 60s but wasn't exactly sunny and warm. After sleeping a few more hours I got up for a little gym time since my legs hurt from sitting so long the day before. Then a group of us headed down to the beach and (they) played some football and I just ran around trying to keep warm, the wind was so strong! I stuck one little toe in the water and thought it was going to have to be amputated it was so cold! But looked beautiful, I didn't realize how much I'd missed seeing an ocean and it's smells. mmmmm homey. Then after a nice break in the sand we wanted to make sure we had time to eat and start getting our costumes ready! I had this really ambitious dream of making my hair in a bow similar to Lady Gaga and I wanted time to practice. After sitting there for an hour playing around with it I'd had about enough and settled with however I could get it best at that point-not the best I'd ever done but some people actually understood so I was happy! My other roommates were a Mardi Gras princess, devil, and an other Gaga-esque figure like me! Aka we just wore crazy clothes and did crazy makeup. We all had fun putting on crazy makeup and for me tons of SPARKLES my fav. We had a bright mixture of colored eyeshawdows, face paints and mixture of clothes going on, we were quite a sight. After taking pictures we were ready to get this show on the road and headed down to the buses. Carnaval takes place in downtown Cadiz which is about an hour bus ride from our hotel so we had to be patient and luckily they had made good CDs to help the time pass. We got into town at about 9pm and were ready for the festivities to begin!

It was definitly unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. The streets were filled with people dressed up in every kind of costume you can imagine-it was like a Halloween parade. The streets were filled with bright flashing lights and street venders lined the roads as well. They let us off right on the outskirts of the downtown area and we had to walk our ways into the plazas. It was exhilarating walking down the streets with all these people singing chants, dancing, and being dressed up in some of the most ridiculous outfits I'd ever seen. You had to walk in a straight line with your group to get anywhere and everyone was so squished in those narrow streets. We were in a group of about 9 or 10 of us and we had to keep tight grips on one an other because if you got lost or lost anyone here there was no way you were ever going to find them again. We manuevered our way to the main plaza in front of the Cathedral. It was filled with people, a stage where there were singing groups performing, and street venders selling food. Advice for anyone planning on going- it's nearly impossible to get anything because the lines are SO long but if you're patient and really hungry they have all sorts of foods- all the bars were open and they had stations of mainly greasey foods and alcohol. We walked around observing everything- there was so much/ so many people to look at it was quite amusing. At around 11 we decided it was time for some dinner and we headed off to find a restuarant to eat at. I was suprisingly not very hungry but managed to snack on some crackers the restaurant gives as appatizers, called Picos, which are an other little Spanish obsession of mine. After some rejuvenation we were ready to keep going and walking more of the streets. We headed back out to the Plaza and somehow kept running into people we knew, which was funny because this place was FILLED to the brim with people. People got creative with their costumes I saw a mix of it all: bumblebees, nuns and priests, cows, Christopher Columbus, gypsies, lots of people with wigs, masks, face paints, candies, foods, the list goes on and on. People definitely didn't hold back with their outfits- it was awesome. You could really just throw on a bunch of random stuff and you'd fit right in- which was my plan and luckily it turned out ok! I had on a grey sparkely shirt with a black sequency skirt with my "liquidy" leggings as I call them and my knee high boots with lots of face painting and my silly little hairbow- which I hairsprayed the heck out of. While in the plaza we met tons of Spaniards and I got an excellent chance at practicing my Spanish, while they were all trying to practice their English with me. We were each speaking and responding to each other in a mixture of both languages it was hilarious. Our group had two buses going back to the hotel, one at 2am and the other at 4am. Before we knew it 2am had already passed and we were going to have to make it till 4am. We were having so much fun we didn't even realize the time pass by! But sicne we wanted to make it back with time to spare and find the bus station we started walking back at around 3:20ish. After pushing our way through the masses of people still out and the streets which were now disgusting with trash and an assortment of other things we made it back to the bus. The walk back was sooo cold, it was already cold this night but by this time the wind picked up and especially since we were right on the water we felt the chills. I was too much of a baby to even think of not wearing a coat so I definitly rocked my "puff puff" as I call it all night- it's at least a bright color-red- so I felt it would be ok and boy was I happy I had that on all night or else I would have FROZE. It wasn't Madrid cold but it was chilly! We finally made it to the buses with time to spare, but ended up sitting on the bus waiting for a good 40 minutes because people FAIL at being on time, I was annoyed but just fell asleep luckily for the whole bus ride home and was home before we knew it. We ended up getting home at about 5:30 but were still feeling the vibes from the excitement of our night and were up talking about it until about 6am. We set alarms to be sure and not miss out on that glorious breakfast the hotel gave us. After 2 hours of sleep I got up, ate my body weight again, and was so happy to go back to bed. We weren't checking out until 2:30 and was definitly going to nap since it's impossible on the bus. I took a nice shower and slept until about 12. We were dreading the bus ride and knew it was going to be a looong one. But luckily we had tons of movies and succeeded at watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Old School, and Notorious (which was the best one and we didn't even get to finish it because we got back to Madrid). We got back to Madrid at about 12 which was earlier than I thought we'd make it back at and I was so happy to be home. We just had a short metro ride back to our little pisa and we were in heaven to be home! I was greeted with a lovely little package from home with some much missed foods :). Now we're getting ready for an other week of classes and woke up to...SNOW ahhh its so cold here I thought all the snow was over but apparently I was wrong, guess I'll be wearing 9758947 layers to class today. Seeing the snow shoots down any motivation for anything but I will be spending this week resting up because Thursday we are headed to Paris and Germany for our 5 day weekend!

Carnaval was amazing and truly an unforgettable experience- definitly a pinch-me-is-this-real weekend :)