Barcelona carnival (and the 2nd floor)

February 27, 2014 - We were walking to dinner Thursday night when we heard and saw a lot of firecrackers in the distance.  As we got closer there was a large crowd of people, adults and kids in costumes and colorful flags.  

A quick search on Google revealed that carnival in Spain begins with 'Dirty Thursday', called Jueves Ladera (Spanish)/Dijous Gras (Catalan) or Greasy Thursday in Barcelona.  Not hard to figure out it's a day dedicated to eating a lot of food.  If we had stayed in Barcelona for the weekend we could have seen the Gran Rue, the big carnival parade.  
 
On Ash Wednesday the carnival comes to an end with the funeral of the sardine. The King of Carnival dies and is buried in his grave in a funeral cortège, accompanied by his widow and companions - the colorful costumes are appropriately exchanged to black mourning clothes. Traditionally, on this day fish is eaten. (www.barcelona.de)

 

The next morning there were whistles and sirens coming from the street, from our balcony (on the '2nd floor' but technically on the 4th floor... more on that below) we could see the neighborhood school children and teachers, all dressed in costumes, noisily parading around the block. Post parade, the school children spent the rest of the day playing carnival games on the playground, strung with sparkly, blue streamers, that we could see from the rear window of our apartment. 

In the afternoon, walking through the Gothic Quarter/Old Town Barcelona, we were able to see more crowds of kids dressed in costume, we kept seeing girls dressed as juice boxes as we zig-zagged through the narrow streets, obviously a well coordinated group of friends.

view from our front balcony

view from our rear window of the school carnival games

an impressive (and ambitious) carnival costume in front of another school

Back to the 2nd vs. 4th floor... When we arrived in Barcelona and the apartment, we loaded our suitcases onto the elevator and were instructed to go to the second floor.  Once we were settled and started venturing out to explore, we would take the stairs more often than the elevator. Thus we noticed we were technically on the 4th floor... there was the entry floor, the next floor was the 'principal' (main in Spanish), followed by the 1st then 2nd floor. The girls were amazed by this obvious, simple mathematical error and talked about it every time we either walked up four flights of stairs or pushed 2 (instead of 4) on the elevator.