So Ceca will never forgive me if I write a blog about carnaval and don’t mention the sambódromo. I wasn’t particularly excited about it so I’ll keep it short.
A sambódromo is a sort of exhibition hall where Samba schools in Brazil perform for the public and compete during the carnaval. Most schools spend the whole year leading up to the next carnaval preparing; their theme, their dance moves, costumes etc. and they get judged on all of the above. The carnaval parades take place during carnaval for four nights from 8pm until the morning. Each samba group has 90 minutes to parade from one end of the sambódromo to the other along with its float, all its dancers and instruments, while it is graded by the jury. The winning school is announced a few days later.
Tickets range from cheapish to extremely expensive (VIP tickets start from like $3,000USD) so a lot of Brazilians are excluded from watching the parade. We managed to get super cheap tickets at the door but we didn’t have the best view and our carnaval camera (a cheap one we took with us in case the good ones got stolen) ran out of battery so we have absolutely no photos. I’ve taken the liberty of stealing some for the purposes of the blog. The costumes and dancing is beautiful and the parade has millions of viewers, both live and on TV and its well worth a visit if you’re there.
