These posts cover festivals and events we experience during our trip.
Each day Desak and Kuman, the cook and housekeeper at our villa at Tumbak Bayuh, consult the Balinese calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. When Kiki, the villa manager, suggests we try to see a traditional ceremony while we’re on Bali, she heads inside to check the complicated almanac. While we naturally have difficulty deciphering … Read more
Angels are said to have ploughed the fields of Saint Isadore, the patron saint of farmers, who could apparently work miracles when it came to the land, which explains why, on May 15, catholic farmers around the world celebrate the Feast of Saint Isidore or Festa di Sant’ Isidore. The Feast of Saint Isidoro in … Read more
It wasn’t on the scale of the festival we’d just experienced in Perpignan, but we were delighted to return from the Southern French city to our little village of Ceret to find the French Catalan community out in full force on Place Picasso doing a folk dance known as the sardana. On the drive to … Read more
Good Friday or Vendredi Saint is marked in no small way in the town of Perpignan in Southern France with the Procession de la Sanch. This slow, somber march through the streets of the old town opens the Easter Holy Week or La Semaine Sainte celebrations. Even when we arrived a few hours before the Procession de la Sanch, … Read more
“The town is alive – there’s always something going on,” Carl, our host in Perpignan, had told us when he took us for a coffee shortly after we arrived. “I’ll hear a trumpet and drums from my window and I’ll stick my head out and there’ll be a band and crowd moving down the street, … Read more