Whenever traveling, flexibility is key and today proved that. We were supposed to visit a marble quarry this morning but due to all of the recent rain there was a land slide that blocked the roads to the quarry. Our FUA professor, Marco, suggested yesterday evening that we visit a castle instead and we were all on board. This morning we found out that the castle was only open on the weekend, so instead we were going to walk up to the castle to see the outside and the views; little did we know the steep climb that awaited us. We all made it and the view was amazing.
After visiting the castle, we made our way to the city of Pietrasanta where we all enjoyed some free time for lunch, shopping, and of course some gelato while soaking up some sun.
We had a quick hour stop in Viareggio, a beautiful boardwalk style area right on the beach, to see where the Viareggio Carnevale was held. Carnevale is a celebration to mark the beginning of Lent and comes with many fun and crazy floats that parade around the city.
Our last stop was to Cittadella Del Carnevale to learn how the floats were produced and see a few as well. All of the floats are made via papier-mache (which is absolutely mind blowing to me). There are four tiers of floats; personal, small group, first group and second group. All of the floats are funded by sponsors and committees. The personal floats cost 1500 euros, the small group was 25,000 euros, second group was 62,000 euros and the first groups got 122,000 euros for their floats.
Each float took about five months to construct. After Carnevale, they were simply destroyed, and the artists got ready to design and create next year’s floats. It was amazing to see these floats up close to truly admire the work of the artists who used just some wire, paint, and 📷newspapers.
[This post was composed by Heather Heyrman, a sophomore studying Health Sciences with a pre-medicine track]