Sacile Carnevale 2011

March 5, 2011

Carnevale is the last celebration before the lent season begins and is the Italian version of Mardi Gras but with confetti instead of beads. We are going to save next year for the Venice Carnevale celebration when the boys are older but we thoroughly enjoyed the Sacile celebration this year.

Heather and Todd invited us over to watch the parade from their PERfect viewpoint in their apartment that looks directly down onto the parade festivities. We made a batch of hurricanes to share with our friends and they shared their typical Carnevale fare--sweet pasta fried and covered with sugar or honey. This is looking out their window down the street before the parade.
The theme this year was Disney. If you closely enough you can see Cinderella, Snow White, Buzz Lightyear, etc.
Porter and Eli sort of enjoying the festivities. Eli is not a fan of loud noises and the parade was very loud!
I believe this float was supposed to be like the movie Aladdin.
Each float had some container/device for dispensing loads of confetti into the crowd.
This is to show how big and wide these floats were for the narrow Sacile streets. Our stroller barely fits on that sidewalk.
Most of the music they played was American and they really enjoy two-stepping oddly enough.
A large plastic bag on wheels full of confetti. There were so many people of all ages with each float. We wondered where they set up the floats and practice their routines.
More two-steppers.
Alice in Wonderland float.
Alice's Wonderland friends--there were a lot of them.
Pinocchio. Geppetto looks rather mean.
This particular float had to stop and rotate their cards in on the back because they were not going to fit through the most narrow part of the street.
And here is where our version of Carnevale becomes official. We watched these guys walk around with "beer bong" (for lack of a better word) confetti shooters. The Snyders apartment windows were open with no screens, so we were aware of the confetti throwers throughout the parade. When someone on the street would see us hanging out the window, sometimes they would act like they were going to throw confetti through the window and we would quickly shut it. Evan and I watched this guy fill up his little device and look at us, so we quickly shut the window. Only to watch him place his gun on the back of the float. All is good right? No. He had an entire bag of confetti, open, and he tossed it right into our window as we were shutting it.
And here is the mess that followed. Confetti everywhere.
I mean everywhere.
Aside from the confetti disaster, we cleaned everything up and enjoyed the rest of the parade. It was beautiful weather, a fun activity, and celebrated with friends--a great day!