Carnaval in Maastricht

Thanks to a little research, Justin planned our weekend trip to coincide with Carnaval in Maastricht, Netherlands! I've learned that places all over the world celebrate Carnaval and it holds different meanings in each place. We wanted to experience everyone's crazy costumes and observe the celebration and the opening parade on Sunday. We checked into our hotel on the edge of town and headed into to Maastricht to grab food and to join in the festivities. I have never seen anything like it - thousands of people dressed up in weird costumes, drinking waaay to much beer, dancing and singing at the top of their lungs! All we could do is laugh because it was the perfect combination of Halloween and VEISHEA all at once!

After dinner and a few beers with the masses and a viewing of Slumdog Millionaires( BEST MOVIE EVER - go see it if you haven't already!!!) in a cute little theater, we headed back to our car - only to find out it was being towed away! We saw our car turn the corner and we started sprinting to the spot where we had left it. We weren't alone, at least 6 other cars had been towed or were in the process. The spot we parked in turned into a bus lane at some point - who knew?!!?! We certainly had no idea, and neither did other Dutch people who had parked there which made us feel a little better. That pretty much put a big damper on a fun evening, and our relatively inexpensive weekend getaway doubled in price :(

On Sunday we didn't feel like watching the parade in the rain, so Justin drove us to the town square so we could grab a few pics and then we headed off to explore before heading back to Brussels.

http://www.maastricht.info/

We thought this float was going to fall apart on the highway - it was bouncing around behind the truck at 60 mph!


Clearly this guy has more than 1 costume going on...


Red, green and yellow balloons were EVERYWHERE!


Crowd waiting for the parade to start


Cute sign


When we discovered our car was towed, the policewoman pointed to this sign.. From now on we are going to play it safe and pay to park underground whenever we can!


Everyone was riding bike/cart contraptions to the celebration. This group had people in front of the card and the bike rider had someone on his back - too funny!