Outside in the streets we could see men dressed in leiderhosen/rubber dresses/high heels/nothing, women in gold-sequined bras/colorful wigs, children in animal tails and fairy wings and even people wearing little inflatable swimming pools complete with plastic balls. Pretty much anything goes at Carnaval. I saw one guy walking about in his calvin klein underwear, wife with baby stroller by his side, as if he had run out of costume ideas and just said f*^% it, why not?!
Dressed up in our comparatively conservative attire our group made our way to the Sambodromo for about 10 PM. We arrived as the first Samba school was about to start out.. As we'd predicted, top school or not, we had no idea how to judge the displays but stood back in awe at the colorful, glittering dancers and floats making intelligent remarks like Cool! Awesome! and How Pretty! The thing that most impresses at Carnaval are the amazing ideas and the detail that go into costumes, floats and choreography. One float I loved was a huge pram filled with men wearing baby bonnets, pacifiers and not much else ... a huge Momma standing over them looking into their giant pram. There were also variations on animations with floats flanked in moving dragons heads.
The centerpieces really seem to be the Samba divas that shake their tushies like regal, rhythmic queens down the Sambadromo, heads topped with giant feathered, sequined headpieces that seemed impossible to maintain upright. Each school has one to 3 or 4 of these ladies and they hold pride of place in the limelight near the best floats. Their shapely figures a key component with curves being the word for the day, thin is not in at the Sambadromo!
As the Samba parades don't start til quite late, they continue til 6 AM. I imagine then topped off by open dancing and drinking. We stayed til well after 3 AM - our boys as alert and excited as anyone else. We let them have several coca colas during the evening - their version of vodka and red bull - and they had so much fun watching the parades, playing with balloons, taking their costume bits on and off. We had a few interesting folks in our seat areas who were kind to the boys, talking and playing with them. There weren't a lot of other children at the parade - I'm sure the prices are part of the deterrent, in addition to the drinking and naked-ish people. Hmmmm, I hope this doesn't ruin our chances at being parents of the year?
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