Nice’s Carnival is spread out over two weeks in late February just as spring is arriving in the sunny Cote d’Azur. Almost a million people visit for the festival but don’t let the number scare you away. The town never felt crowded and even during the big events everyone was well behaved.
There are lots of events scheduled during the two weeks, but the two main events are the Flower Parade which happens during the day and the Parade of Lights which is at night. Each occurs separately during the week and on Saturdays you can catch both on the same day. The two parades couldn’t be more different and each is grand enough to be worth an entire day’s activity. Because we were in Nice for a limited amount of time, we saw them both on the same Saturday. It was a great last day of vacation before flying home the next morning. What a send off!
Each year Carnival has a different theme and the parade floats are loosely based on the theme. This year, the theme was The King of Cinema to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nice’s film studio and it also happened to occur during the Academy Awards.
The Flower Parade
We arrived at the Flower Parade an hour early and the security lines weren’t that bad so we had plenty of time to spare inside our section (Zone A) which is located in Place Massena, the historic plaza of Nice and the heart of the Carnival. We had seats in the bleachers (as does everyone in Zone A) but we waited to take our seats until just before the parade started. The best pictures I took of the Flower Parade were actually from before it started because many of costumed parade participants were wandering around the plaza entertaining the parade goers and posing for pictures. I enjoyed the ‘pre parade’ as much as the actual parade.
Just as the parade was about to start we scurried to our assigned seats at the top of the bleachers. We had a good view from up top but the lower seats were better for catching the flowers that were thrown into the crowd. The floats of The Flower Parade are decorated with over 3,000 flowers, most of which are grown in the Nice region. It takes three days to add the flowers for each parade. The floats go around the parade route twice and the second time around they tear the flowers off the floats and toss them into the crowd. When you walk around town after the parade is over, you’ll see lots of kids and adults carrying the flowers they scored from the parade.
Parade of Lights
The Parade of Lights is a crazy (and well behaved) street party and a different story compared to the Flower Parade when it comes to crowds. We got there an hour early again, but this time we had to wait in line for over half an hour before getting back into the Place Messena (Section A again). Unlike the Flower Parade, you can watch this parade from down in the plaza without an assigned seat in the stands and many many people crowd into the plaza. If you find yourself squeezed into the crowd, as we did at first, just keep walking around until you find a nice roomy unobstructed space to watch. We eventually found a good spot where the floats first enter the square. We had plenty of room to move around and could even jump into the middle of the parade for a quick picture or two. Despite the crowd, the parade was good natured and civilized with lots of families and children watching. Even though it felt like a huge crazy party, it didn’t have the drunken Mardi Gras atmosphere that I was afraid of.
The floats were several stories tall, topped with big headed figures moving and weaving through the parade. Although they loosely followed the Cinema theme, they also poked fun of politicians and referenced current events such as the #MeToo movement. Charlie Chaplin was there but so was Putin, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and his wife. Trump made a couple appearances, one of them as a huge evil clown.
When the floats started to make their second loop around the parade route, we walked against the flow of the parade and towards the exit at the waterfront end of the route (Zone B) and got another great view of the floats as we left.
The French sure know how to throw a parade. It was like nothing I’ve seen before and hard to capture with words. Hopefully these pictures show what a crazy street party it was. The next day, on our long journey home, I was reminded of our adventure each time stray confetti fell out of my bags.