Parades

Mexicans love parades and so do I!

We've seen quite a few since we arrived in November. There was the big one, of course, on Revolution Day, but also many smaller ones. One of my favourites was the baseball team, about 20 or 30 little boys, marching down Aquiles Serdan on a Saturday afternoon. They were preceeded by 2 police cars, sirens blaring and were followed by their proud parents. There was a car blaring banda music (what else?) and several more police cars in the rear. Everyone stopped what they were doing to watch and cheer the boys on. It was priceless.

The first parade of Carnaval was on Sunday, going North from the Fisherman's Monument to Valentinos, the start of the Golden Zone. On Tuesday the parade will march again, going the other direction, heading south to Olas Altas (our part of town).

The parade is actually in 3 sections. The first part was the Pacifico pre-parade, and the second was the sponsor parade. The third, and final part was the official Carnaval parade.

We had been invited to watch the parade from the apartment balcony of friends who have a place right along the route, so once again, we had a perfect view of the festivities. We have so many nice friends! Just before the parade started several of us decided to improve the view even more by dashing down to the street and standing right in front of one of the beer tents! We were close enough to reach out and touch the participants.

We were also in the perfect position to catch the many items that were tossed to the crowd and came home with quite a haul - T-Shirts, CD's, water bottles, bags of tortilla chips, strings of beads, a lighter, and also the odd package or two of condoms. Hey, it's Carnaval, guess folks should be prepared for everything!!

The cab dropped us off on Av. Insurgentes, and as we walked up to Av. Del Mar (the Malecon) we were able to check out the vendors



and also the 'street' food. Yummy.



Of course, there was also food at the apartment.



We weren't the only ones having a picnic.



We've simply got to stop eating!!

The view was stunning. This was looking north



and this was south. Our casita is on the other side of the hill with the towers on the top (Ice Box Hill).



And then there was the parade!!

















Tonight we're going to pass on all the food and just watch the parade, again.