A breath of fresh air - revisiting Alicante

Welcome to Alicante! On the Costa Blanca (the ‘white coast’), in the southeast corner of Spain lies this jet-set port, laid back beach town, urban metropolis and historic city. Know both as Alicante and Alacant, the city is home to some 350.000 people, plus another 450.000 people in its surrounding towns and hundreds of thousands of tourists and summer residents that flock to Alicante each year.

I had a chance to revisit Alicante a bit earlier this year. It had been a while… a looong while. I was picturing in my head a plain sandy beach and a 1990’s cookie-cutter beach resort but - to my pleasant surprise - found a lot more than that!

DansaBrasil - celebrating 10 years of lambazoukin' Barcelona

It was a gorgeous sunny Thursday morning two weeks ago when I boarded a train in Alicante on the southwest coast of Spain. I was leaving my little Spanish spring holiday behind me and dragging a surprisingly heavy trolley bag. The air was still cool and people were going about their usual daily routines but I had a certain special smile on my face: I was on my way for some all-day-all-night zouking in Barcelona at the DansaBrasil 2015!

DansaBrasil congress, also known as Congresso Internacional de Lambada/Zouk en Barcelona, had been long on my list of "must-visit events". Being already at its 10th edition (!!) it's quite a historic event in the zouk scene and for many European so called old school zoukers it has been their first zouk congress. Though on this particular jam-packed weekend there were a lot of options for us zouk dancers; while many of us enjoyed bank holidays on Friday 1st of May, the congress organisers around the world also wanted to bank on this. Events in addition to DansaBrasil that same weekend were the Prague Zouk Marathon, L.A. Zouk Congress and the Zouk Fusion congress in São Paulo.

But my (harder than ever) choice was made - I was not going to miss the 10th anniversary of DansaBrasil!

It's time for carnavaaaal!

Carnival! The most colourful, indulgent and rambunctious time of the year! Carnival is a festive season which occurs according to the Catholic calendar before lent, setting this year at around 28 February - 4 March. Depending where you go you may see different types of events - but you can expect massive street parties and spectacular parades. Costumes and masks are worn, and in fact historically they served a purpose: behind those you could hide your true identity, race and gender.

The Brazilian carnival (or carnaval in Portuguese) is perhaps the most famous of all carnivals. Millions of people travel to Brazil for this crazy week - Rio de Janeiro has undoubtedly the number one carnival in the world. The carnival preparations can start even a year before and the celebrations can go on a couple weeks. It all culminates on the samba parade where the best samba schools in Rio sing, dance and party their way through the Sambadrome, Sambódromo (the samba exhibition area designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer) in front of over 50.000 spectators. Samba schools spend thousands of hours and reais (even millions) to produce the massive floats and detailed costumes each year. BBC just last week posted an interesting video of how the Mangueira samba school in Rio de Janeiro is preparing for the carnival: see the video here.

The parade schedule in Rio de Janeiro Sambódromo in 2014:

• Fri 28 Feb and Sat 1 Mar: Samba schools in the Access Group compete to get a spot on the Special Group on the following year.
• Sun 2 Mar and Mon 3 Mar: Samba schools in the Special Group - the twelve (six on each night) most famous samba schools - parade with thousands of dancers, outrageous costumes and massive floats. This is an intense competition for fame, glory and position as the best samba school of Rio de Janeiro.
• Sat 8 Mar: Winners' Parade - the best samba schools from the Special Group parade once more.

I got to see the 2012 Winner's Parade in Florianopolis - it looked something like this:

But it's not just the parade with tons of glitter that makes the carnaval. The true heart and soul of the week lies in the working class neighborhoods and favelas, Rio's hillside 'slums' (a number of them have been "cleaned up" and made safer for the residents and tourists alike). Many favelas house their own samba school and the people there are proud supporters and members of that school. A visit to a local samba school before the carnaval is recommended! You can find also street parties all around the city, organised by the blocos. These are casual & crazy events packed with people partying with their friends, some wearing costumes and performing smaller street parades.

While I was in South America in 2012 I made sure I was in Brazil for the carnaval. I decided to head to a smaller city, Florianopolis, avoiding the most expensive and most packed events in places like Salvador or Rio. And I wasn't disappointed! Read about my entire carnival week in Florianopolis - it was quite an experience!

Street party in Florianopolis!

Looking for the world's best beach

My search for the world's best beach is endless... In my travels I keep looking for and stumbling upon amazing beaches but I just can't get enough!

CNN recently came out with their list of 100 best beaches. I love their introduction by the way:

Is it possible to rank the world's best beaches?
- Of course it is. This is the Internet.
Will everyone agree with our ranking, murmuring respectfully among themselves about how perfectly accurate every placement is?
- Maybe not. This is the Internet.

You'd think people love the same things about such a simple thing as beaches but probably not... Some like it hot, some shady. Some love to people watch, some want utmost privacy. Some like that it's isolated and hard to reach, some like the convenience & the amenities. Some want pristine sand or lounge chairs, some want playgrounds and beach volley fields. Some want to snorkel, some surf, some swim, some won't put their toes in the water.

I've been to beaches in as north as Iceland, as south as Tierra del Fuego and traveled to world famous beaches in Brazil and Australia... and still looking for my favourite one! But I put together some of my favourites, only for you my friend! ;) I've tried to be "fair" and list lots of different types of beaches to make it interesting...!

* By the way: if you're looking for the ultimate beach to dance zouk then you definitely need to head to Porto Seguro, Brazil!

My top ten beaches (so far)

10. Kata Yai, Phuket island, Thailand. There are surely many many more beautiful, quiet, idyllic, beaches in Thailand and South-East Asia but as I'm a freak for sunsets I have to say I've enjoyed some of the most beautiful ones here. Lots of snorkeling places right off the beach and some more secluded beaches can be found closeby. Rent a motorcycle and tour the island!

Beach & lamba-zouk week in Barcelona!

After my long trip around the world I wasn't exactly looking forward to traveling more any time soon. But I wasn't looking forward to dark & rainy autumn days in Finland either. So I booked a trip to Barcelona for mid-September for the 4th Beach Zouk & Lambada Festival.

The festival was held in Santa Susana, 60km or 1h20min train ride up from Barcelona, right on the beautiful beaches of Costa Brava, Spain. Our small "team Finland" arrived on site already a day before the event, just enough time to unwind, unpack and get a little beach time before the zouk&lambada marathon that awaited! Santa Susana is a small town, basically like one big tourist resort. There's the beach and close to it there are restaurants, shops and hotels. A little off the beach is the town centre and up on the hill there are the residential areas - we never made it that far, after all we just came there to see the sun, sea, sand and dance our feet off!

Holiday on the beach - not bad!