10 of the best n carnivals and festivals
10 of the best n carnivals and festivals
Where and when: Salvador, Olinda and Recife carnivals; same dates as Rio. What happens: Bahia’s one-time capital, Salvador, has a strong African heritage and hosts South America’s wildest carnival celebrations, the Afro-samba rhythms at the heart of the carnival. Recife and neighbouring Portuguese colonial town Olinda throw Brazil’s most traditional carnival celebration, with parades, frenetic frevo dancing and African-Brazilian balls and parties. Do it: A Salvador Carnival package from Dehouche includes a stay at a former convent, the Convento do Carmo, and a fiveday VIP pass, spending all five carnival days on the Olodum Afrosamba drumming band’s float, for £3,347 excluding flights.Veloso has the Convento do Carmo on seven-night stays, from £2,053 with flights.Tell Tale Travel includes Recife and Olinda; a twoweek trip costs from £2,999 with flights. Flights to Salvador de Bahia from Amsterdam and Paris are available from Air Europa. www.dehouche.com, www.telltaletravel.co.uk, www.veloso.com, www.aireuropa.com
n Spectacular float at Rio's Sambadrome
Fiesta forever
Departing on February 15, it also takes in Washington DC, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and an overnight cowboy camp, and costs from £1,779 with flights. Leger Holidays combines Mardi Gras with visits to Nashville, Memphis and Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion and birthplace at Tupelo on an 11-day tour, from £1,249 with flights. www.leger.co.uk, www.trekamerica.co.uk
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Dust off your party clothes and get ready to join in the fun as we track down some of the most colourful and spectacular carnivals, festivals and fiestas around the world
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3. Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, USA The event: The world’s most spectacular gathering of hot air balloons, with hundreds of all shapes and colours taking to the skies of New Mexico. www.balloonfiesta.com When: October 6-14, 2012 What happens: The annual, nine-day spectacle is the world’s largest hot air balloon festival. From just 13 balloons launching from a shopping mall car park in 1972, it has grown into a multiple-launch event with a 78-acre launch field as the centrepoint of the 365-acre n Mass ascension custom-designed Balloon Fiesta Park which includes a over Albuquerque host of other activities and entertainment. Up to 750 hot air balloons can fill the skies at the same time during the mass ascensions, while other events include “special-shape rodeos” featuring unusual designs, earlymorning and evening “balloon glows” with burners being fired to light up dozens of tethered balloons, and flying competitions. n n Balloons Do it: Cosmos includes two nights in Albucome in all shapes querque for a mass ascension at the fiesta as part of its 15-day Native Southwest & the Rocky Mountains Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta tour. Also taking in Arizona, Colorado and Utah, including Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, it costs from £1,879 with flights. www.cosmostoursandcruises.co.uk
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Jeff Anding
and some sun and beach, from £3,300, including direct UK flights. A package from Dehouche The event: The biggest and most famous costs £3,310 staying at celebs’ favourite, fiesta of them all, Carnival takes over Hotel Fasano, excluding flights. Rio with its parades, balls and events www.tucantravel.com, www.telltalemarking the arrival of Lent. www.rio-carnival.net travel.co.uk, www.dehouche.com When: February 17-21, 2012; 2. New Orleans Mardi February 8-12, 2013 Gras, USA What happens: Kicking off on the Friday night before Fat Tuesday The event: New Orleans’ Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday), Rio turns into one is the daddy of America’s carnivals and big street party when the mother of all carnivals comes to town with featheraround one million people take to the clad, sequinned and body-painted streets over the final two weeks of dancers from the city’s samba schools Carnival to experience its world-famous competing with each other as they swirl to parades and parties. www.mardigrasthe infectious rhythms of the samba drums. neworleans.com The Sambadrome stadium is the focal point, When: Parades start on February 4 this year, with the most spectacular parades featuring with the culmination on Fat Tuesday, February colourful floats on the Sunday and Monday 21. Embratur nights. There are colourful carnival balls, and What happens: Dubbed the “Greatest Free Show on impromptu street parties take place throughout the city Earth”, the 2012 Crescent City Carnival season features including on its beaches, with Ipanema the pick of them. 57 parades in the greater metro area, more than 1,000 Do it: Four-night Rio Carnival packages with Tucan floats and 100,000 participants. Join the crowds in DownTravel start from £480 as a bolt-on to a longer tour and town to grab multi-coloured beads and doubloons tossed include a Sunday ticket to the Sambadrome. Stand-alone by riders on the carnival krewes’ decorated floats as they package prices start from £530 per person, excluding pass by, then down Mardi Gras mojitos in the bars. flights. Tell Tale Travel includes the carnival as part of a Do it: Trek America is incorporating Mardi Gras into its two-week Brazil tour that also features wildlife-spotting 21-day Southerner tour for the first time this year.
n Giant figures adorn Mardi Gras floats
Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
carniva est: ls a festival nd s
1. Rio Carnival, Brazil
Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
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n Carnival at Olinda
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Brazil’s other carnivals
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10 of the best n carnivals and festivals
4. Ottawa Winterlude/Quebec Winter Carnival, Canada
ClaudelHuot
n Dancing on ice in Ottawa
Tourism Quebec
n Quebec Carnival’s Bonhomme
The events: Fun annual celebrations of winter in neighbouring provinces Ontario and Quebec with lots to do for the whole family. www.carnaval.qc.ca/en, http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/celebrate/winterlude When: Winterlude takes place this year from February 3-20; Quebec Carnival is from January 27-February 12. What happens: Quebec City’s annual winter carnival is the largest of its kind in the world and has been going for over 50 years. It features parades, night events and activities from family fun to extreme, including snow rafting, snow-tube slides, skating, dogsled racing through Old Quebec and a canoe race on the frozen St Laurence River. Winterlude features skating, sledding and walking along the frozen Rideau Canal, snow and ice sculptures, a gigantic snow playground and shows. Do it: Cosmos has a six-night Quebec Winter Carnival tour, from £1,375, with departures up to February 8, including flights and a stay in Montreal, then a VIA Rail trip to Quebec City for four nights with a Winter Experience Passport giving access to carnival events and activities. Bridge & Wickers offers three-night stays in Ottawa for Winterlude from £1,043, including flights. www.cosmostoursandcruises.co.uk, www.bridgeandwickers.co.uk
5. Trinidad Carnival, Caribbean
n Fire-breather at Trinidad Carnival
Trinidad and Tobago TDC
Trinidad and Tobago TDC
n Feathers in Trinidad
The event: The Caribbean’s best carnival, it is a riot of colour, steelpan and soca music – and partying. www.gotrinidadandtobago.com/trinidad/carnival When: February 20 & 21, 2012 What happens: Many cultural events take place across the island leading up to the highlight – two days of street parades before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, with things kicking off at 4am on the Monday when revellers take to the streets for the pre-dawn J’Ouvert party. Carnival Monday brings out elaborately-costumed “Pretty Mas” bands, dancing to soca music blasting out from speaker-filled trucks before the main event on Carnival Tuesday, when masqueraders take to the streets en masse and vie for the title of Masquerade Band of the Year. Do it: Flights with British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Monarch and Trinidad hotels can be booked through Newmont Travel for the island’s carnival. www.newmont.co.uk
6. Holi festival, India The event: A Hindu holiday known as the Festival of Colour, it is one of the most exuberant festivals in the world and is celebrated all over India. When: March 8, 2012 What happens: Revellers welcome the arrival of spring and disregard social norms and taboos with parades, music, dancing, and mayhem – spraying friends and family with brightly-coloured powders and water. Do it: World Expeditions’ seven-day compact Delhi to Kathmandu trip will make sure you are in Jaipur, the capital of the desert lands of Rajasthan, for Holi. Departing on March 7, it costs from £590 not including flights. You can also take in the festival on a tour through
n Splashes of colour at for Holi
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10 of the best n carnivals and festivals
10 of the best n carnivals and festivals
Rajasthan aboard India’s luxury Palace on Wheels train, starting and ending in New Delhi. It is featured by several UK tour operators. www.worldexpeditions.co.uk, www.palaceonwheels-train.com
n Sydney’s Mardi Gras
The event: Originally begun as a protest event, this irreverent and fun celebration by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities has now come to define the diversity and tolerance of Sydney. www.mardigras.org.au When: March 3, 2012 What happens: Sydney’s biggest party of the year involves tens of thousands of participants watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators. Proceedings are kicked off by the Dykes on Bikes, with more than 100 groups taking part on gaily-decorated floats or walking, among them Lifesavers with Pride, Rainbow Babies and Oz Fag Hags. A Mardi Gras Party including theatrical shows and four dance venues follows the parade, continuing the carnival atmosphere into the night. Do it: Flight Centre offers flights to Sydney and hotels, with airfares and four nights in the city starting from £1,099. www.flightcentre.co.uk n Face-painting, Mexican-style
Azalea
n Flamenco's finest strut their stuff in Murica
The event: The village of La Union, in Murcia, is the setting for the world’s most important annual flamenco festival, which translates as the Song of the Mines Festival. www.fundacioncantedelasminas.org (Spanish only) When: August 6-15, 2012 What happens: Song, dance and guitar playing are the three disciplines in an event packed with authentic flamenco. La Union’s Public Market is the site for this major festival, which represents the flamenco history of the mining tradition in this area and includes prestigious competitions. Gala performances feature top stars and during the festival, parallel activities include exhibitions, wine tastings, flamenco soirées, and courses in guitar playing, dance and percussion. Admission to all the festival’s parallel activities is free. Do it: Murcia-based travel company Olympia Mar has a two-night stay in a four-star hotel in La Manga del Mar Menor for 385 euros, including transfers to and from La Union and entry on two nights to festival events. Airport transfers to Murcia and Alicante airports are optional extras, as is an excursion to historic Cartagena. www.olympiamar.com
9. Day of the Dead, Mexico n Fundacion Cante de las Minas
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The event: Despite the name, this is no sombre remembrance of the departed but a joyous event celebrated throughout Mexico. www.dayofthedead.com When: November 2, 2012 What happens: From brightly-adorned graves and papier-mache skulls to bakery windows full of skeleton-shaped bread, children’s sugar skull sweets
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and competitions for the best-decorated altar, Mexico’s most colourful festival is held on All Souls’ Day and is marked in many different ways across the country. Do it: A 10-day tour of Oaxaca, discovering its celebrations of the festival and then exploring ancient archaeological sites, natural landscapes, a cloud forest and local markets, costs £2,325 with Travel the Unknown, leaving on October 29. www.traveltheunknown.com
10. Edinburgh International Festival & Edinburgh Festival Fringe The events: Scotland’s capital takes centre stage each summer with world-class music, opera, dance and theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival, and the eclectic offerings of the Fringe, now the world’s largest arts festival. www.eif.co.uk, www.edfringe.com When: 2012 dates – International Festival August 9September 2; Fringe August 3-27 What happens: The Edinburgh International Festival brings together some of the world’s elite performers over a three-week period for concerts and performances including, for 2012, two modern Shakespeare adaptions. Starting and ending a week earlier, the Fringe attracts thousands of performers from big names to little-known artists and includes theatre, comedy, dance, musicals, music, exhibitions and events. Do it: Connoisseurs Scotland features four luxury properties offering accommodation during the Edinburgh International Festival. They include former home of The Scotsman newspaper, The Scotsman Hotel, with rooms
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from £370 and baroque Prestonfield, originally built in 1687 as the home of Edinburgh’s Lord Provost, where rooms start at £295. www.luxuryscotland.co.uk n Fringe performer on Princes Street
n Fringe masked lady Gillies and Zaiser PR
Edinburgh Inspiring Capital: www.edinburgh-inspiringcapital.com
Sydney Mardi Gras
8. Cante de las Minas, Murcia, Spain
Travel the Unknown
7. Sydney Mardi Gras, Australia
Do you know of better carnivals or fiestas? Tell us on tlm’s Facebook page: http://bit.ly/tlm_facebook – and see our suggestions for 10 of the rest.
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