Saturday, October 29, 2011

F1 Fanzone - Parade on the Corniche

So my camera wasn’t working well for this.  But – it was really cool!  I will got some pics from a friend that went with us and add more to this later.  We headed up to the Corniche for the opening day of the FanZone.  F1 – Formula Racing stuff is big here.  Abu Dhabi is part of the circuit.  From what I understand about car racing (which is about a step above zilch) is that we do Nascar and there are 14 or 18 (can’t remember) countries that do Forumla 1.  Maybe it’s like AFL vs. NFL – wait is that right?  Maybe it’s like the different baseball groups in the MLB. Heck, I don’t know, I just know we don’t have it back home.

So - I read online that the parade was starting at 4, but it of course didn’t really start until 6.  Typical misinformation here.  We got there early and there was this great Fanzone area where the kids could do lots of neat things.  Cameron had a great time driving the car around – until Cameron drove through the fence (wish I had pics of that, it was pretty funny – although I did feel badly and apologized a bunch!)

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Since we got there early, there were people recruiting kids to be in the parade to help represent the 14/18 countries (I can’t remember how many there were).  Alexander didn’t want to do it, but Bella did (again – bad camera and no pics – but will post some later when I get a few from my friend).  She represented Italy and got to wear an Italian flag poncho and have her face decorated.  There were lots of kids for each country and then professional performers representing the country.  For example:  England/Buckingham Palace Guards, France/Mimes, Brazil/fancy dancers, some country/people on stilts.  It was fun to watch with loud music and tons of people.  It all ended with a Bollywood performance.

I did find a copy on youtube of the parade and if you look closely, you can see Bella in the front row of the Italy section!

 

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