This past week was QUITE a social one, I'll just say that two consecutive nights of "Circle of Death" were tough on the body. So, this Saturday, I awoke at 1230PM, went to lunch at 1530PM and then walked up the Corso to Piazza del Popolo to observe the Chinese New Year's festivities. First off, I LOVE how in Rome, and in most cities in Italy, there is a public space almost every huge gathering takes place. In Rome, when something big is happening, it's almost always at Piazza del Popolo (Piazza of the People). You can pretty much assume that it is. When I heard about the Chinese New Year's festivities...I knew where to head.
The parade took place up the Corso around 2 (they had to be finished with it before the evening Passiagiata). And then there were a few hours of exhibitions, etc. I arrived around 5, only getting to see the last hour, and then the pretty impressive fireworks.
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| These daylight pictures are pilfered from the "Browsing Rome" website, but I just wanted to show some of what it looked like with light. |
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| Here's the stage, facing the Pincio gardens. |
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| The emcees for the festivities. What was awesome was that everything was in both Mandarin AND Italian, and when I didn't understand one language, I could use the other. |
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| Of course there were different martial arts exhibitions, but I was surprised (not sure why) to see non-Chinese involved. I guess I would see that in the United States, but I've always thought the Italians to be less interested in non-Italian activities. In addition, the Piazza was FULL to the brim and almost the entire audience was Italian. I was impressed....which is probably me being a bit hard on the Italian people to begin with. |
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| My favorite, of course, were the acrobats. Amazing! But the hour and a half I spent at the festivities only made me MORE excited to head to Beijing this fall. Looking forward to it more and more each day. |
