Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago's largest calendar event is its carnival parties throughout the capital. Calypso and soca music fill the streets while revelers dance and limbo.
Wine lovers beware: the most popular wine during Port of Spain's carnival is not the drink, but the hip-swaying dance move.
(image via FlickreviewR, CC)
Mexico
Mexico's largest carnival celebration features floats and parades across its nine days, complete with celebrity concerts. With roots in indigenous and African influences dating back to the 1700s, Veracruz's party has withstood multiple attempts at suppression during Mexico's colonial period.
Now, carnival regularly draws 50,000 visitors.
(image via mr_angeloux, CC)
Alabama
New Orleans may be the first American city that comes to mind when Mardi Gras is mentioned, but Mobile, Alabama, is the official home of the celebration's roots in the United States.
Besides the visible parades and floats throughout the city streets, secret societies also host balls and other invitation-only events for their unknown numbers of members.
Belgium
While the carnival celebrations of Binche may not be the largest in the world, they are among some of the oldest, dating back to the 1300s. The most unique feature of this carnival celebration is the Gilles.
These performers wander the streets while dancing and drumming, tossing oranges into the crowd, all the while wearing ostentatiously feathered headpieces.
(image via inessaraiva, CC)
Greece
The Patras Carnival rivals any of the large events across Europe with numerous events held throughout the weeks-long celebration. The Children's Carnival takes place a week before the main event and features over 5,000 kids parading the streets.
Hundreds of people participate in a large-scale treasure hunt, and, to close everything out with a bang, the Carnival King's float is set alight following the end of the Grand Parade.
Germany
Cologne's "crazy days," as they are known, have all the traditional markings of a carnival celebration: parades, street parties, and crazy costumes. Being German, however, a few of the other traditions take their cues from Oktoberfest.
Visitors shouldn't be surprised, for instance, if they find themselves interlocking arms with their neighbor for schunkeln.
(image via stevendunbar)
Italy
The Carnival of Venice is the world's largest masked ball. Elaborate period costumes and ornate, expensive masks are worn by festival goers while parading through city squares.
So revered are the mask makers, their profession is a point of pride and has an array of laws all its own.
(image via mauro.puppett_photography, CC)
Chile
"Con la Fuerza del Sol" or "With the Force of the Sun," as the carnival is locally known, brings 70,000 visitors to this northern Chilean city (to say nothing of the 10,000 participants).
Elaborate street dances and brightly colored costumes characterize this Andean-influenced celebration and set it apart from its other South American neighbors.
Australia
Sydney's mardi gras celebrations merged with the city's gay rights parades to produce one of the world's largest pride celebrations.
While celebrating the LGBTQ community, the parade also features the inclusion of emergency service personnel (notably police forces), a particular nod to how far things have come since the arrests of the first gay rights parades in the 1970s.
(image via Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras)
Louisiana
Mardi Gras, as it is called in much of America, has its unofficial home in New Orleans. NOLA is the Rio of the U.S., featuring the biggest floats and the longest parades.
One of the more interesting traditions is the Mardi Gras Indians, krewes composed of members from the city's historic communities of color. Their parade routes aren't published ahead of time, and encounters with other "tribes" result in spontaneous competitions of display and dance.
Colombia
Barranquilla's carnival celebrations are one of the most multicultural events in the world. Every ethnic group participates and plays a significant part in the festival.
Each year's carnival king and queen lead elaborate floats through the streets, flanked by dancers and street performers.
(image via exuteban)
Brazil
Rio's carnival celebrations are the pinnacle of over-the-top display. With over two million participants per day, it's the world's largest street celebrations.
The party is so large, in fact, that the city built the Sambadrome, a Circus Maximus-style open-air stadium to host the samba school displays.
(image via nateclicks, CC)
