The french festival in winter : Nice carnival and Menton lemon festival

A nice carnival is known for inheriting a Venezia's tradition and began in 1878.

It is consisted of flower carriage contest, horseback parade, paper snowfall, the war of flour and ends after fireworks.

Carnival's highlight is flower carriage made to delight audience. Horses pull the many flower carriages and people in the carriages exchange bunch of flowers. Many dummies dressed gaudily and beautiful women dressed with flowers throw the flowers that weight 10t and lead the carnival.

This contest is mobilized with 1500 people every year. The king's flower carriage parade with 2,000 children forming procession. Many streetlight of the both sides of the procession brighten the streets and bands and dance companies come from all parts of the world are in the streets. Flower carriage is made by carnival's master craftsmen and a car decorated with flowers manufactured by designers, artists, and sculptors.

The carnival's tradition dates back to medieval times. Vegliony, a masked ball and salon carnival affected by Venezia's carnivals were held and street's carnivals decreased in 18th century. Since 1830, the king Charles first made the carnival for the queen Mari christine of Sardegna. And that carnival is present-day Nice carnival.

Menton located in south part of France is resort city and also known for area of lemon production. In winter, it is in the limelight like nice so many people visited it. It is not very big, so they can walk the city and look on. They can feel warmth of spring day.

Menton lemon carnival began in 1934. Ever since the 15th century, Menton has been a major producer of lemons. At the beginning of the 20th century, this Mediterranean city became the biggest producer of this fruit on the continent. In 1929, an hotelier came up with the idea of organising a flower and citrus fruit exhibition. It proved so successful that the following year, the festival spilled out into the streets with carts carrying orange and lemon trees. It became increasingly successful over the following few years and so in 1934, the municipality decided to create the Fête du Citron The Parade of Golden Fruit is held in February every year, during the Carnival.It's begining with the masquerade of the children, and exhibits made of lemons and oranges are built in the Bioves garden. Bioves garden exhibition selects and express a single theme every year.During Festival, we can see wagons decorated with lemon and oranges and residents in traditional custome marching all over the city.Whenever the festival they select for different cartoon and install a huge structure from the 30 million t of oranges and lemons.