Carnival in Alcobaça: a riot of colour, music and cute kids

Imagine a six-day, four-night-all-night Halloween party and you come close to Carnival in Alcobaça: a riot of colourful costumes and decorations, music, dancing, and parades of cute kids and seniors.

Confetti and streamers coloured the streets for the week-long celebration, from Feb. 16 to 22 in 2023. Other parts of Portugal have even wilder celebrations with more elaborate costumes and parades of floats and marching bands: Madeira, Lisbon, Torres Vedras, Loulé and Podence, for example.

We knew about Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Venice, and New Orleans, but had never experienced this exuberant festival ourselves. Coming, as we do, from central Canada, the most we’ve ever done to celebrate the time before Lent begins is to eat pancakes with maple syrup on Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday is the official holiday in Portugal, but the celebrations really start the week before. Take note if you’re planning a trip to Portugal in February or March!

Carnival began hundreds of years ago in Italy as a big party on Shrove Tuesday – the day before Lent began on Ash Wednesday. Catholics traditionally didn’t eat meat (carne) during Lent – the 40 days of prayer and fasting before Easter – so they wanted to party beforehand. Other Catholic countries in Europe thought it sounded fun, including Portugal. The Portuguese then introduced Carnival to Brazil, one of its former colonies, so we should have known it would be big and noisy here.

A week before Carnival, we began to sense the enormity of the coming party when workers started assembling a gigantic domed tent in front of the Monastery. Banks of speakers were aimed straight at our apartment building just two short blocks away. Uh oh! What were we in for? According to the schedule, the music would go to 4 a.m.!

Wearing themed costumes, seniors took turns doing the arthritis boogie up and down the red carpet.

The first event was the seniors’ parade. We discovered it’s not a parade that winds through the streets, but rather a parade inside the big tent. Seniors sat in groups, wearing themed costumes, and took turns parading up and down the red carpet, doing the arthritis boogie with big smiles. Younger people assisted those with canes, walkers and wheelchairs. We assumed the groups were from seniors’ retirement and nursing homes.

Next came the children’s parade – an exuberance of cuteness as they walked hand-in-hand with big eyes searching the crowd for their parents. By then, we had figured out that the theme this year was peace, hence all the hippie costumes with bell-bottom jeans, flowered headbands, tie-dyed shirts, long hair, and round, pink-lensed glasses. Doves, angels, hearts and superheroes completed the theme.

That afternoon there was supposed to be a parade for high school students, but it didn’t amount to much. We suspect they were too cool for a parade and games in the tent. But in the evenings, once the serious partying got underway, we saw many high-school-aged kids out with their friends. We know of one 16-year-old who got home at 7 a.m.

This year’s theme of world peace included doves, hearts, angels, hippies and superheroes.

We loved the inclusivity of Alcobaça’s Carnival – with fun for all ages. In addition to the all-night parties, there were afternoon dances for families in the big tent. We bought masks and went to one of those. Booths down the length of the tent sold drinks and traditional Portuguese snacks. DJs in costumes led the party. But the thumping music with no discernable melodies was not to our taste and we couldn’t hear ourselves talk, so we didn’t stay long.

The restaurants and bars along the esplanade that faces the Monastery were in full party mode, with decorations, coloured lights, and temporary booths selling beer, wine and cider. The café tables under the umbrellas were all full, so we sat on the steps at the base of a monument, sipped our ciders, and people-watched.

Most people wore costumes, and some were quite clever. We even saw dogs dressed as angels and ballerinas. A common option was men dressed as women and vice versa. Our favourite was a young man dressed as a traditional Nazaré woman, wearing seven layers of skirts, a large shawl around his shoulders, a head scarf and carrying a sign advertising rooms for rent. The costume was spot on – we often see the Nazaré ladies advertising rooms and selling fish in the market. (Nazaré is the nearby beach town with a strong fishing culture. The ladies are said to be the last Europeans to wear traditional dress daily as a matter of course.)

The night-time parties began at 10 p.m. with the loud, pulsing music that shook our windows and metal blinds. Ear plugs were not enough.

Now, don’t go thinking we’re party animals; we’re not! Carnival inspired us to think back to our younger years when we did try to stay out late, drinking, dancing and partying until dawn. That may have happened a few times during university days but our hearts were never truly into it. And over the decades we’ve realized that’s just not our thing.

So, the Carnival nights turned into a survival game. We knew we wouldn’t be able to sleep so we decided to stay up until the music ended at 4 a.m. and then sleep until noon. That was our strategy. Our neighbours tried others: our downstairs friends moved twin-sized mattresses into their kitchen and hallway, which were quieter corners. The couple next door took sleeping pills, and our upstairs neighbour “got outta Dodge.”

We went for a walk at 1 a.m. one night. Spotlights roved the sky and intermittent firecrackers popped. The esplanade was jam-packed, with the bars each playing their own music that competed with music from the tent – quite the cacophony!

We didn’t see any overtly drunk people and felt quite safe walking around the party zone, although we felt conspicuous by our lack of costumes. When we headed back to our apartment at 2 a.m., the line to get into the tent was much longer and the crowds denser; it seemed that the party was just getting started.   

At 3 a.m., we realized it had been nine hours since we’d eaten, so we made sandwiches. The music did end at 4 a.m. the first two nights but went on until 4:45 a.m. and 5 a.m. the next two.

Carnival ended on Ash Wednesday with the Enterro do Entrudo, which translates as Burial of the Shrovetide. A straw doll was placed inside a coffin and paraded around the streets, ending up outside the big tent where it was ceremoniously burned. Unfortunately, we missed this part of the celebration since we had to go to our Portuguese language class. We saw the glowing embers on our way home from class.

We were happy to experience Carnival and see what Portuguese partying was all about. But our survival strategy may change next year. Two couples who live just outside Alcobaça have invited us to sleep in their guest rooms next year. We may well take them up on their offers. Carnival is fun, but we do like our sleep.

We celebrated Carnival in Alcobaça Feb. 16 to 22, 2023. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.

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