Travel Blog by 
In an effort to improve our spoken French, my wife and I decided to volunteer for a community project entitled "Allumons Vallauris."
Every year, in July, the whole town comes together, places candles in the streets and lights them.
In all, over 50,000 candles were used. The streets were closed to traffic throughout and hundreds of people spent hours placing candles in elaborate patterns and lighting them as the sun went down.
It was an almost surreal experience, seeing the town lit up with thousands of candles.
One of the things that struck me was how different this experience was compared to somewhere like the USA. There were no police, no firemen on hand, no safety barriers, kids were running all over the place, having a great time, but well-behaved.
As a tourist, this is definitely worth a visit and very much a community event that welcomes visitors.
Of course, once the candles were all lit, we retired to the comfort of a bar on the main street to enjoy an aperetif and watch the kids re-light the candles that had blown out.
If you are interested in this, and other festivals, the mayor runs a website listing up-coming events:
http://www.vallauris-golfe-juan.com/
Comments
kath_visits says...
Wow, this looks really atmospheric, I love local festivals...they're a great way of seeing the way a community works.
Posted 515 days ago.
marcus1234 says...
Yes, it was fantastic. I'm English and my wife is American, and this was so different to the sort of things available in the UK and US. We loved it.
Posted 515 days ago.
Helen says...
I think volunteering to actually do something in a country is a great way of getting to know it, as oppsed to just passing through or only seeing the touristy bits
Posted 515 days ago.
marcus1234 says...
That's true, and there are loads of things like this to try, if you just know where to look. This one is a yearly event and the mayor's office has a website you can check if you are interested in going next year. I put the link in the post.
Posted 500 days ago.
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