MENTON, France (AP) — As most of Europe prepares for the festive weeks leading up to Easter, the holidays are just getting started on the French Riviera.
The Mediterranean city of Menton showed off its bountiful citrus fruits and celebrated the upcoming Paris Olympics with a parade on Sunday. Sculptures of athletes made of lemons and oranges decorated streets and parade floats.
Nice, the capital of the French Riviera, opened its carnival season on Saturday evening with a parade of lights and extravagant floats, including one with Luke Skywalker from the film “Star Wars” as the king and Marilyn Monroe as the queen, dressed as Spider-Woman.
Both festivals on France's Mediterranean coast date back to a medieval Mardi Gras tradition of staging elaborate public performances for visiting European nobles. In recent years, politicians and public figures have also been mocked at Carnival.
However, the parades in Nice and Menton avoided divisive issues and instead focused on recognizing achievements in film, music, art and sport.
“We wanted to honor the Olympics because Paris will host,” said Christophe Ghiena, technical director of the Menton Lemon Festival, known locally as the “Fête du Citron.”
The theme of the 90th edition of the Lemon Festival was “From Olympia to Menton”. Ten floats marched with tennis, rugby and badminton players, a boxer, a swimmer, an equestrian and a surfer named John Lemon. The crowds were so great that they doubled the local population of 33,000 people.
Each float that marched through Les Jardins Bioves park in Menton had about three tons of fruit attached to a metal structure in the shape of an Olympic theme. In addition to depictions of modern athletes, there was one of the Greek goddess of victory and others of discus and javelin throwers.
Menton, located between the southern French Alps and the Mediterranean, was once a major citrus-growing region, but today there are only 15 companies there. The more than 140 tons of citrus fruit used in the floats came from Spain.
“The lemons we produce locally are not enough for the festival,” said Marine Krenc, events manager at the Menton Tourism Office. “Honestly, we’d rather people taste our lemons than show them off.”
According to local legend, King Louis XIV of France enjoyed Menton lemons, drinking their juice and bathing in their oils. In Nice, mechanical puppets of Luke Skywalker and Marilyn Monroe were crowned with bright lights and applauded with shouts and confetti as they were placed in the central square during the “Star Wars” theme.
In keeping with the theme of this year's parade, the king and queen will oversee their subjects and other pop culture figures until they are burned and buried until the end of the month. Barbie, Wednesday from “The Addams Family” and Indiana Jones are some of the other characters on the floats.