festivals

Alebrijes

November 15, 2011 By Jillian

You may not recognize the name, but if you’ve been to Mexico you’ll likely recognize the brightly colored sculptures of fantasy animals and creatures. First created in Mexico City by artist Pedro Linares, alebrijes can be made of paper mache, wood or even metal and are often creatures most associated with fantasy or dream-like worlds. Brightly colored, alebrijes are commonly associated with Mexico City and Oaxaca. Both cities host alebrijes festivals, art shows and even parades to display their craft. These festivals are generally held in October, November and December to coincide with Halloween, Dia de los muertos and the Christmas craft season.

Here are some pictures from the fifth annual monumental alebrijes parade held in Mexico City. Each alebrije was created by a different art school, museum or community organization. Sponsored by the Museum of Popular Art, the parade ended along Paseo de la Reforma where the alebrijes were put on display.

Photo: Inside the Bull Ring

September 13, 2011 By Jillian

Spain is forever etched in my mind as the home of late nights, tapas, sangria, siestas and beaches. Spain’s regions are culturally different due in part to its varied history. We ran with the bulls in Pamplona, a once in a lifetime experience, if only because once you’ve done it you never want to do it again.

We flew into Barcelona spent the night and took a bus to Pamplona. It was a whirlwind journey of Northern Spain, as we crammed the festival and San Sebastian into just a few days. Running with the bulls was a crazy event. From the huge street parties with meter wide paellas, to the all night concerts, ridiculous number of young Brits stumbling around drunk, and the street performers (and pick pockets!) it was all a bit like Carnivale in Venice- more than your imagination can handle.

The highlight of course was the actual running of the bulls, which is over in about 5 minutes. After getting up to run the first morning, we learned to go to the Bull Ring with the locals and wait for the bulls, and want to be matadors to pour into the ring. While the streets felt like a drunken festival, the bull ring felt like a cultural event. We didn’t attend the afternoon bull fights, just the morning fights, where young bulls are set free in a ring to teach stupid tourists a lesson!

IF YOU GO: Pamplona’s festival runs for a week the middle of July. While it’s a fun experience, you won’t want to stay the whole week with nothing else to do, 24/7 parties get boring after a day or two. With more time we would have looked for Barcelona apartments to rent and used one as a base to explore Catalonia before heading further north to Pamplona and Basque country. Basically, you should plan your time efficiently in Spain, there’s a lot to see.

Photo of the Day: San Fermin Gigantes

March 10, 2011 By Jillian

If you are killed when you run with the bulls, you will be reincarnated as this giant who has its head on backwards. One day of the festival, after the running there is a parade of giant puppets: a giant king and giant queen from each continent.

Special thanks to Flickr user Duguna for marking this photo as a favorite.

To see a few of our favorite photos from Spain click here.

Our PHOTO PAGE has links to all of our collections on Flickr. Be sure to mark some of your own favorites so that we can include them on this column. We’ll be highlighting a different photo every day.

Photo of the Day: Beer Wench

March 1, 2011 By Danny

Next time I’m at home and ask my wife to get me a beer and I accidently call her Beer Wench instead….well….now you have photographic evidence that its not my fault.

Special thanks to Flickr user OktoberBlumenau for marking this photo as a favorite.

To see a few of our favorite photos from Brazil click here.

Loi Krathong Festival

December 13, 2010 By Jillian

Before we left on this journey I got the crazy idea that maybe we should festival hop our way across the world. You know, experience a country through its holidays? Ever practical, Danny shot the idea down for logistical reasons, it would involve too much land jumping. Fortunately we’ve caught a few festivals here and there on our travels, mostly out of sheer luck, and they’ve always been interesting experiences. We were bummed to have missed the autumn traditional boat races in Laos, but excited when we saw a poster in Bangkok for the Loi Krathong Festival.

Loi Krathong originally probably celebrated the spirit of the water, and traditionally people release small banana leaf boats, decorated with flowers and candles into the river on the night of the full moon. Coinciding with Yi Peng, or the lantern festival celebrated in Northern Thailand, the entire festival is called a festival of lights and basically its just a good excuse to have fun. After catching a floating parade and fireworks in Bangkok we headed to Chang Mai, in northern Thailand to see the festival in its full glory.

Three days of fireworks, parades, parties, music, street markets, food and of course lanterns.People released their own small boats into the rivers and causeways, but the real festival in Chang Mai was in the air. Each night hundreds of thousands of white paper lanterns were lit and released into the air. Couples, families and friends gathered around each lantern and launched it into the air. Like small sparkling stars, the lanterns floated around in the sky following the wind. It was magical, although more than a few did crash and burn!

Chang Mai has two special markets, the Sunday Market and the Night Market. Combining these two with the festival left us wanting nothing, from food to crafts to crazy nick nacks. The streets were crowded as huge colorful parade floats, with beauty queens and religious depictions rolled by. Although we didn’t actually see it, there is supposedly a float just for the infamous lady boys. According to the lady at our hotel, they’re they best looking women in the parade. Decked out in flowers, lights, glitter, lady boys and fabric, the parade was a feast for the eyes.

At the end of the festival, we set off our own lantern for good luck in the upcoming year.

Alebrijes

Photo: Inside the Bull Ring

Photo of the Day: San Fermin Gigantes

Photo of the Day: Beer Wench

Loi Krathong Festival

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