Carnival

It's Carnival time in Malta. Like most southern European countries, Malta celebrates several days prior to the beginning of Lent. The party began this weekend and continues through Tuesday evening. Ash Wednesday -- this year, on February 10 -- is a national holiday.

Some of our students heard there was a big Carnival party in Gozo on Saturday night, so they organized themselves to go by public transportation. Mary and I were having none of it, so we left them to their own devices. None returned until the wee hours of the morning. Too late for us! From the photos, it was a young crowd that was well-lubricated with alcohol.

We're old hands at taking the ferry from Sliema to Valletta by now.

More our speed, we went to Valletta on Sunday afternoon for what was billed as a 1 p.m. parade, and a couple of the students came with us.

Lots of milling about -- including one on stilts, carrying a baby.

In America, if a parade was to begin at 1 p.m., folks would have lined the parade route with lawn chairs well before our arrival around 12:15. But there was none of that -- just hundreds and hundreds of people milling around.

The parade was led by people on foot wearing giant heads.

Mary asked a Maltese man on the street about the 1 p.m. parade. He just laughed and said, "That means we hope it may start before 3!" Island time is relative.

Lots of princesses.

Some of the adults were wearing costumes, all of the children were. Most of the girls were one variety or other of princess (our granddaughter would have been in her element). Superheroes and pirates were popular for boys.

And another little princess.

By the time something like a parade began, around 4 p.m., it was more like thousands of people milling around on the streets. Since most of Valletta is closed to automobiles, and there aren't huge parking lots around, we wondered how they had all gotten here. There were no barricades or police clearing the parade route. In fact, we asked a couple of police officers what the parade route was, and they didn't even know for sure.

The first float

When the parade finally happened, it happened in slow motion. The streets were still packed with people, so the floats (which appeared to be made mostly of something like papier mache, pulled by tractors) would go about 50 feet and then stop. They stopped for a long time. Then they would go another 50 feet or so, and stop. Again, for a long time.

Many costumes seemed to have themes from India

One driver had a smoke before moving again. Another got off the tractor and brought beer to the guys who were walking along the float trying to keep members of the crowd from being run over.

Some people stood by the side of the road to watch. But most just kept milling about. We stayed about an hour and saw five floats. Then we'd had enough. Although everyone seemed to be having a good time, it was the oddest parade I've ever seen.