Monday, June 23, 2008

Summer Solstice in Spain

Last year, we were in Norway for the summer solstice and had 24 hours of daylight. This year we celebrated at a street parade in Algecires.

Algecires has a reputation as a place to avoid. We spent 2 nights here so we could have a trip to Gibralter and had seen nothing to counter this reputation until we happened on the parade on our last night.

We stood amongst the crowd as the floats, bands, dancers etc passed by. It lasted for over 2 hours. Among the notable items were huge floats including inflated elephants and other African animals; floats with beautifully dressed women and others with children; marching bands of every type _ salsa, traditional Muslim etc; dancing girls _ Brazilian beauties and other South American dancers, drum majorettes etc; horses and riders with beautifully groomed horses and great looking men and women in national costume and lots more.

At last we solved the mystery of why you see dozens of dentists in each neighbour hood. Every float had people throwing lollies _ lots of lollies. Most people gathered up 5 to 10 kg each. We took home to our hotel a pocketful. It is just as well we are booked in for a dental check on our return.

3 comments:

theotherbear said...

Did you ever work out what the parade was for?

Miss Di said...

Watch out no one has laced the lollies. You don't want to wake up in your bath tub sans a kidney.

(OK I know you survived because I can see there are other posts on top of this one)

gailandrob said...

The parade was because it was the longest day of the year.