How many of you knew that Santa Clause was a real person? Yep, St. Nicolas, or in Italian, San Nicola. Now how many of you knew that San Nicola is the patron saint of Bari? Yep, that's right. I went to a THREE DAY SANTA CLAUSE PARTY ON THE BEACH. I bet you weren't expecting that!
The train in to Bari was so packed that I could hardly move. Everyone from miles around comes into Bari for this party every year. The beach was equally packed with people. I ate a panzerotto with my friends, which is this region's version of a calzone. We walked up and down the beach, enjoying the sea breeze and the crowd. People were selling food and random crap, and it was so fun to be in such a huge crowd. There was a three-part firework show over the ocean, which was intense. It was much more intense than any firework show I've ever seen, because the rockets were being fired from several different locations (sometimes being shot almost sideways) and converging over the ocean from crazy angles. It was so loud that I thought the windows on the buildings were going to break. Then we walked through the tunnel of light to see the statue of San Nicola.
The tradition is that on the first day of the festivities every year, they take the statue of San Nicola out of his cathedral and parade it down to the beach, where it's set up on a pedestal for all three days of the festivities. They had a light team from the United Arab Emirates come and set up a spectacularly intense tunnel over the statue made up of all manner of crazy colored lights, in the form of a Cathedral. It was incredibly detailed and massive. Basically, we were walking underneath a life-sized, to scale model of a cathedral, faithful down to the last detail, but made incredibly out of lights, suspended above us in the air. San Nicola is SERIOUS BUSINESS here.
We also got to see the Frecce Tricolori, or the Tricolor Arrows. They're a team of aerial acrobatic jets from the Italian airforce that flew overhead in crazy formations. They flew in diamond, wedge, arrow, and a few other formations. As they flew, they released huge plumes of green, white, and red smoke over the crowd, forming the Italian flag. They flew so close to each other that it looked like their wings were touching. It was incredibe!
All in all, San Nicola must have been a pretty okay guy if his birthday party is that intense and amazing every year
Anyways, as promised, here are the pictures of Alberobello and Polignano. Enjoy!
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