BUSKERS!

For the last week, we've been out every night at the fun that is the Buskers Music Festival! Every year, Ferrara hosts street performers from around the world for a week-long festival in the middle of town. There are musicians, acrobats, magicians, artists, and fortune tellers.  And it's so cool.

To kick everything off, the owner of the restaurant we like to go to by our hotel came out and sang to us the night before the festival. Halfway through, he had Robbie sing some songs with him. It got us in the music state of mind.

Robbie singing, Michael picking his nose

The first day of the festival, Michael and I were trying to let Daddy take a nap, so we went out by ourselves. Daddy's nap didn't last too long, because we found a section of buckets, shakers, rain sticks, and other kinds of noise makers set up just for kids to play with, so we called him out to come hang out with us. Michael played with the shakers for a little bit, then banged on a bucket for a while before he decided he wanted the bucket on his head instead.

 

Once we were done there, we wandered in front of the cathedral and saw our first performance--a group with drums, a guitar, and an electric violin. They were really good. We sat and watched the whole performance, Michael dancing in his stroller and my lap the whole time.

 

One of our friends here was performing this year. He had a friend come up from Arkansas and they played a country/folk/bluegrass set for the first 3 days of the festival.  It was fun to see someone we know and follow them around the festival.  They did a great job, though the Europeans don't really know what to do with country music.

 

There was such a variety of music.  There were groups with bagpipes and drums, more traditional bands with guitars, one group had a guy that played a conch shell, and there were several instruments we had never even seen before. It was really fun to walk around and hear all the different music.  We also realized how much Michael loves music and maybe is showing a bit of a talent for it.  Whenever someone would start to play, he would get so excited and start to dance.  He was surprisingly on-beat most of the time.  You could tell he loved it, and we stayed out every night as late as we could, riding that fine line between enjoying the music and too-exhausted baby.

 Fabulous piano player right in front of the cathedral

These girls were from Santa Barbara!

 

 

There were also several bubble stations set up every night, where kids (and adults) could play making huge bubbles. Michael loved to watch these too. He's getting to the age where he notices things more and is starting to actually like things (he normally has a very even personality and doesn't show much excitement for things), so we are having fun encouraging his likes. We went stopped by a toy store on the way back to our hotel one night to buy him some bubbles to play with.

 



 

 

Buskers is also good for people-watching, and we had fun watching all the people who aren't normally in town.  And babies in baskets:

 

And this picture doesn't have anything to do with Buskers, but I thought it was cute anyway.

 

It's a good thing we'll be busy moving into our apartment this coming week, because once Buskers is over we won't know what to do with ourselves! Tomorrow there's an antiquities market in the piazza I've been looking forward to, then we need to go work on our apartment a bit before the last night of the festival.  We need to fit in all the Busking we can!