festivals Keyword
Battaglia dei Fiori
In Ventimiglia, once every two years a pretty amazing festival is held: La Battaglia dei Fiori or in english, the Battle of Flowers. This festival is an celebration of the Spring where the communities that make up Ventimiglia compete to create the best most extravgant float to be judged during a parade. These floats are made almost entirely out of flowers. One person told me there can be as many as 80,000 flowers on a float, but from the looks of them I would guess more.
The floats parade around the town on two days. The first is a night parade, with dancing, music and food. Everything culminates in a fireworks spectacular while the floats are repaired and touched up ready for the following day. The daytime parade is where the meat of the competition happens. Float girls climb aboard their communities entries, bands fire up, dancers and entertainers pour out onto the street. I have never felt such a happy, excited crowd. The parade loops around the town two or three times, at which point everyone in the parade starts showering the crowd in flowers. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. With this the parade degenerates into a massive flurry of thrown flowers with the audience getting in on the game and having a good time.
The day was a caccophony of music, fragrance and colour and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I particularly liked the Pink Floyd float. A fairly fitting way to end my last day in this wonderful town.
Enjoy the (rather large) gallery, and there’s even a bit of fan service in there, just for Kym. The day photos were taken from a rather precarious position on a fence, from which my relative who was one of the float girls almost knocked me off with a well pitched flower. The flower battle starts on page three and the day time parade on two.
Rockin’ the BDO
Before I start, I have to say I have a bit of a love hate relationship with festivals. While I pour a lot of my time, money and effort into the festivals I attend they always seem to have some way of fucking me over on one hand, and giving me the time of my life on the other.
Today was the Big Day Out. Adam managed to get me a guest pass which got me into a private bar and toilets, with an awesome view of the venue and getting in was pretty painless. Being in our own bar meant I could avoid the 40degree heat. It wasn’t until I reached for my wallet and realized I had no money that things went pear shaped. Search all I could for an ATM one wouldn’t appear. Resigning myself to a pretty cheap day I did get to enjoy watching Birds rock out to a huge crowd, the caught a bit of the Grates before the thirst set in. For the next two hours, one of which was spent in the line, I search for ATMs. After sustaining a little heat stroke I retired back to the bar and cooled down.
Next I hit up DJ Z*Trip, and danced my little arse off. What an awesome set. There were so many bodies all sweating and breathing that the floor with slick with condensation and the walls had rivulets running down them.
I attempted to go see TV on the Radio, but instead went and cooled down again then watched the Living End. I then swung over to Hot Chip, which started getting packed with people who were getting ready to see the Prodigy. Hot Chip was fantastic to watch, but the crowd was full of meat head dickheads. Leaving the boiler room everyone found the paths blocked to “reroute” the traffic, but the guards weren’t talking to each other and had closed off both ends of the boiler room area, with each end telling the punters to exit via the other. Chaos ensued.
Once we finally got out I got to see what I think was the highlight of the day: Neil Young. He wow’d the crowd and absolutely floored me. I had a great time watching him play, and the show was brilliant.
All in all, a great day. Right now I am sorting out my photos, getting the videos I took ready to be made into a video blog and settling into my new room at the same backpackers. I am looking forward to what the day will bring.