Last year I went to the Rotterdam Summer Carnival to see the street parade. The weather was not fantastic, but it was better than the previous year because, in 2015, the weather conditions were so bad the street parade was cancelled. The street parade went ahead this year, but the weather was slightly worse than in 2016, so it can’t have been too pleasant for the parade participants who were strutting their stuff and dancing in the rain.
I arrived by train and, when I walked out of Rotterdam Centraal, I saw a few girls decked out in carnival attire and it was reasonably dry. I was already familiar with the route used for the street parade and rushed to find an area ahead of the procession. That proved to be no easy task because the city was extremely busy and it was hard to find a spot where I could get a good look at what was going on and, hopefully, shoot a little video footage for my YouTube channel. It was not long before it started to rain and I soon found myself standing in a forest of umbrellas.
There are a lot of participants in the Rotterdam Summer Carnival street parade and if you stay put and keep watching it takes around two hours to see the full shebang. After an hour or so I lost interest, grabbed something to eat, and then wandered back to the train station. Most people were more resilient. I even saw a few spectators dancing in the street with umbrellas in their hands. I wasn’t really experiencing anything I hadn’t seen before though. So, unless the weather is unusually warm and the streets are nice and dry, I think I will give the Summer Carnival a miss next year and go to another event instead.
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