SAMBADROME here we come

4th Feb.
Finally the day we have been waiting for has arrived. Got up late to conserve energy for tonight. It is going to be a long one. We got to the sambadrome. The sambadrome is a specially created stadium with standing areas and seated areas (rows of concrete seats) for observing the samba schools parade. There are 14 schools and 7 or so appear each night. Competition is fierce and schools spend about 6 months if not more creating the floats and costumes that appear for just one maybe 2 nights of carnival. It is the most amazing spectacular thing that one can see that is not a natural phenomena. The dancing and the costumes must cost a fortune and yet they dont have a lot of money but the price of the tickets I believe go back into the schools. Each school writes a theme song and that is sung for the 1.5hrs that their parade lasts. The have to parade no more and no less than 1.5hrs.
5 of us at the hostel had tickets but not for all the same sector. Alex and I were together. We got to the sambadrome about 10. It was packed solid. We stayed til the very end which was about 5.30am. By then our backs were giving up. There were about 10min intervals between each school so we got to sit for those. But while a school was passing by there was no way we were going to sit and miss a minute. It was just so amazing. Alex and I took 100´s of fotos.