Grupo Especial: Salgueiro & Beija-Flor

- Salgueiro came next. A fantastic parade all about books and literature. This was a great theme for a parade because it immediately produced so many great costumes ideas - classic characters from all sorts of literature past and present - Don Quixote (complete with windmill), Romeo and Juliet, the gorillas from 2001 (I did not know gorillas could do backflips like that) , Alice in Wonderland, Captain Nemo (complete with submarine) and so on.

- Beija-Flor had some trouble with their opening float, which failed to rotate like it was supposed to, stalled repeatedly and had to be pushed the whole way. As a result the whole rest of the parade crawled along at a snail's pace until the abre-alas was FINALLY off the runway. By then they were way behind time and the rest of the parade went roaring past at practically a sprint. It practically broke my heart, actually, to see the luxurious last three floats go zooming past so fast that we didn't have a chance to look at them. All that effort to build those beautiful floats and then we didn't get to enjoy them.

I'll post pix later. Got to run, Mocidade starts in half an hour!!!