It's Carnival time in Europe! I've said it before, but they really know how to celebrate over there, what with
St. Nicholas Day,
the Epiphany,
Boxing Day, and Carnival all part of their rich and diverse annual cycle of holidays. Also known as
Carnivale,
Carnaval, or
Fasching, traditionally Carnival is the time to indulge before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent
, a time for fasting and abstinence.
In some countries the official start of the festival season is 11/11 at 11:11 a.m. every year.
(This coming November, 2011, ought to be really big!) In other regions the parties don't really get serious until closer to Ash Wednesday, like
Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Carnival is said to have originated in medieval Italy, and
Venice in particular has a long history of parades, fireworks, and masquerading. Beautifully embellished masks have, in fact, become a popular souvenir from Venice.
(Ugly, scary masks and costumes, too):
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| Costumes and masks are for sale all year long in Venice! |
From Italy, Carnival then spread to other Catholic regions such as Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany. Today, Carnival season is a huge tourist attraction in many countries. If you're lucky enough to find yourself in Europe this time of year, click
here for a
link to an extensive list of Carnival events all over the Continent.
A particular few I read about really caught my eye:
Nice - Carnival in Nice, France, can be traced back to 1294 and nowadays attracts more than a million visitors annually during the two weeks before Lent.
Ivrea - this city in the Piedmont region of Italy recreates a war scene from the Middle Ages every Carnival season called the
Battle of the Oranges, where citizens pelt one another on foot, horseback, and carriages with oranges and other citrus fruits. This one gets my vote for the best Carnival entertainment for the whole family.
Nadur - Nadur is a small town on the island of Gozo, a Maltese island in the Mediterranean. You may not want to attend their Carnival celebrations with children, since their party theme seems to be a bit more off-color. The most common street costumes includes cross-dressers and scarcely clad political figures and clergy folk.
Tyrnavos - And I would say you
definitely don't want to take your children of any age to Tyrnavos, in the Thessaly region of Greece, where Lent incites the locals to hold their annual Phallus Festival. This gaudy spectacle includes music, dancing, food and drink, and, you guessed it, parades of enormous wooden and paper-maché phalluses (
and yes, I learned today that an alternate acceptable plural is phalli
). What the female partiers there do after several shots of tsipouro (Greek grappa) and ouzo is probably not something you want to have to explain to your kids!
My mother lives here in the U.S. – near us, in fact – but was visiting her hometown in Würzburg, Germany, a few years ago when we joined her there. I believe our time together traveling in Germany will be one of my children’s most cherished childhood memories when they grow up. The experiences we shared strolling through palace gardens, walking across old bridges, and delighting in creme-filled pastries formed positive and lasting impressions. Oma pointed out places she used to have lunch and where she used to work, and the kids developed a connection to her past as well as to history, since she told stories of how she remembered the city in ruins after the war.
is late afternoon, it would probably make sense to spend that night in Zurich with the girls rather than take a two hour train ride to Adelboden. (I'm taking eight teenage Girl Scouts to Switzerland in December - see this link for details.) That would just wipe everybody out. So I’m checking out the youth hostels in town.
Then, there is a private hostel called City Backpacker Hotel Biber that has a fantastic location – right in the middle of old town Zurich. But it has more negatives: the cost is a few dollars less than the HI hostel, but doesn’t include breakfast; and there are a few TripAdvisor complaints about cleanliness and too many stairs to go up with luggage.
If you recall my mentioning, one cannot book more than six passengers at a time online. So hubby and I sat down, each of us with our laptops. The Kayak flight was now up to $709 on Vayama. Hubby typed in five names, I typed in six. We clicked "Purchase" at the exact same time. His transaction was confirmed, mine failed. I panicked - I thought for sure there were no more seats available. I tried again - fail. I tried a third time - fail. I had hubby typing in the other six names into his computer so he could try, since he seems to have much more luck (I call it magic juju) with anything computer-related than I do. And sure enough, as soon as he clicked "Purchase," the reservation was confirmed. I did a happy dance. But not as happy as I was when I then noticed that in those few minutes between the first reservation and the second, the ticket price dropped to $648. Have you ever heard of a $648 fare from the west coast to Europe? I am just beside myself with happiness and relief. Thank you, Vayama!
Hubby and I had the brilliant idea one afternoon of grabbing a cheap lunch at McDonalds after our ride with the kids on the London Eye, but our jaws dropped when the register totaled almost £19 (about $30). We ate our burgers and fries in shock as we realized McDonalds in many big foreign cities is not cheap! So where can you get a reasonably priced meal that your kids will eat in London?
directed by Barry Levinson. The young friends, Holmes and Watson, attended an English boarding school and the scenery filmed at Oxford and Eton College was delightfully British. Lovely snow-falling scenes in Victorian-era London evoked a Dickensian Christmas. The story was light-hearted and entertaining.
Searching for airfare is always so nerve-racking. Yes, I love it (you see, my blog header says I love planning trips, which I do!) but the whole airfare system is just so confounding and often demoralizing! Just when you think you found the perfect flight at the perfect price - poof! - it's gone with the next click of your mouse.
My next step was to appeal directly to the airlines. Every airline has an on-line form where you can request a quote for your group of more than ten people. I assumed the purpose was to offer groups a better deal, a discount. NOT!!! Delta responded with a price of $997 per ticket plus a $25 ticketing fee, per ticket. Continental replied they don't have service to my requested area. (Strange, since flights to Zurich are offered on their website.) I'm still waiting for responses from the other airlines, but I'm not holding my breath.
Only a short RER train ride from Paris, Euro Disneyland is an easy day trip from the city. Make sure it’s a long day though, because the park is very expensive and you will want to get your money’s worth. Whether or not you should go with children under 6 depends, of course, on the temperament of the child, but large crowds, long lines, and height restrictions on rides can dispirit even the most good-natured youngster. Disneyland Paris is definitely a dream destination for 8 to 12 year olds, and most teenagers still love the magic, whether they admit it or not.
