Festa della Rificolona

Jess and I have been struggling the past few days to focus with all the noise from the street below our apartment so We closed the windows early tonight and scarified a cooler apartment for a "slightly quieter" one. Not long after we locked the windows we could here extremely loud music coming from outside and it sounded like drums. When we opened up the windows this is what we saw!

We called over our neighbors from ISU and we all decided to get a closer look! We walked out dressed in workout clothes/normal U.S. loungewear, apparently not normal Italian “paper lantern festival style”! We asked one guy what was happening and he asked us if we just came from soccer practice?! We headed over to the piazza looking American, with cameras in hand and we didn’t care! We joined the rest of the crowd in the Piazza Santissima Annunziata still trying to figure out why the heck all these people were here with paper lanterns on a Tuesday night! We were busy gauche over all the people, music, and children’s lanterns when all of the sudden! Brittany was hit with a spit wad! Well, we thought it was a spit wad at least! We looked around and notice ALL of the children had long black spit wad tubes and they weren't aiming at us but actually at the lanterns! Well at least they were supposed to aim at the lanterns!

 

The Festa della Rificolona means Festival of the Paper Lanterns. I wont give you a history lesson right now, although I think it is quite interesting, ill just sum up the modern day version of the festival for you. Florentine children make their own, beautiful lanterns in colored tissue paper and carry them on a tall pole while others target the paper lantern with spit wads made of clay in an attempt to furtively hit them. The objective is to make the candles fall over and set the lantern on fire. It is very common for most lanterns to be burned by the end of the night. 

 

We stood and people watched for a few minuets and decided to go grab some money so we could get the FULL experience. THERE WAS CANDY!!! I believe I said at one point, “I feel like im in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory!!” I spent 4euro on a handful of gummy worms and a small bag of roasted peanuts and they were DELICIOSO! What a seriously random and adventurous Tuesday night in Florence!