Carnaval

This weekend in Clermont there was a Carnaval celebration. With this celebration came a parade, so it being a beautiful mid 70s sunny day, we decided to head out and see the parade. Well we arrived a bit late, so we decided to go closer to the end of the parade route. The town isn't that big and the parade wasn't that long, so we figured that it would be where we were waiting by 30 min or so after the parade began. We forgot we are in France. An hour after the parade was supposed to start it made it to us. The first group was great fun and played fun music, but the parade was moving a bit slowly. Eventually, after we looked at the same act for 5 minutes standing in front of us, we decided that we weren't going to make it all the way through the parade. Someone had the bright idea to schedule the parade at the same time as a playoff rugby game (bad idea). We couldn't understand what was taking so long though. I wouldn't say it was the most organized parade I have ever seen. They needed to block off the sides of the street so that the parade could go without people passing through, but literally people off the street were just joining into the people walking for the parade. It was quite strange.

One of the best parts about the parade though was that all little kids were dressed up in fun costumes. I didn't get a picture of my favorite, a little Robin Hood, but this elephant was a cutie as well.

Then of course there were the normal parade people, clowns, people on stilts, jugglers, etc... I liked this lady on stilts the best and this guy was juggling 5 balls all at the same time. He was the person that was stuck in front of us for about 5 minutes before we decided to leave. Everytime he wanted to stop juggling he had to just let a ball drop because he could only catch 4 in his hands. This of course would be followed by him chasing the 5th ball. Quite amusing in and of itself!