Our third day in Barcelona was just as filled as the previous two days and for good reason there was still so much to see and do in this beautiful city. I have an ongoing mental list of things I want to see and do and one of them was to attend Carnival celebrations. For those of you that don't know what carnival is, it's basically these massive parties, street parades and dancing with bright colors for an entire week before lent. Typically catholic cities have these festivities before its a time of fasting. I probably oversimplified this but if you want more info read this Wikipedia page because of coarse when ever in doubt got to the wiki.
I have always thought attending Carnival in Rio would be amazing but I don't think that's a trip with kids and its to far. So while we are here in Europe I searched for where Carnival was celebrated and Spain was one of them. However even though I have wanted to do this and have even researched it we had no idea we were in Barcelona for Carnival. It was very serendipity and although it was all week long we kept missing the parades finally we planned accordingly (thank you husband) and we got to see this amazing parade. I felt like a local and it just affirmed to me why we live in Europe it's to have experiences like this. We feel very blessed.
These beautiful brightly colored women were dressed for the Bolivian Carnival celebrations. (We caught the ending but at least we got to see the costumes.)
The plan was to go to the Picasso Museum because it just so happens the first Sunday of the month admission is free but had we gone to the museum we couldn't do the zoo. So we gave up a little culture for the happiness of our kiddos. So we went to the Barcelona Zoo and neither of us regretted it, it is a fantastic zoo.
My husband has the best sense of humor and one day he learned about Capybara's and ever since then wants to give one as a gift; this is because when these animals are babies they look like guinea pigs and when they grow they grow to be a size of a hog. He just thinks it would be hilarious to give a cute and cuddly animal and then in a few weeks it would grow to be around 146 pounds. This was the first time we actually got to see them in person. This photo is for my family. When he told them about these animals and his plan they all laughed for hours. I am laughing now just remembering this story.
So after the zoo we made our way to the Born Cultural Museum where the parade would start. There is so much history in Barcelona also known as Catalunya. Catalunya was a country until Spain took it in a war a long time ago. Anyway this particular parade was all about the battle and how they lost but they want to make Catalunya independent again. At least I think this what it was about the whole thing was in Catalan which is like a mix between Spanish and Portuguese (in my opinion anyway.) Read more about Barcelona's fascinating history here.
I will always remember this night although ladybird did not really enjoy it. In fact she cried for the part of the parade she said the noises where to loud. This is where a nice man in the crowd stopped his wife who was walking in the parade to take off her balloon that was tied to her wrist to give it to Ladybird. It cheered her up and for the rest of the night Matthew and I danced, sang and clapped our hands with the rest of Catalunya.
Cheers.
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