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Viva Cuenca: one weekend, three festivals
Why celebrate one festival when you can celebrate three? We hadn’t planned our visit to Cuenca to coincide with this particular weekend, when the city parties, but we were lucky to be here at this special time and to be able to join locals and other visitors in some of the fun.
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Carnival parade in Praia, Cape Verde
There's nothing like a carnival parade to stir up the emotions. There’s the anticipation among the spectators as they wait for the parade to arrive – can we see it in the distance yet? The excitement when finally it arrives, with all the colour and spectacle. The joy on the faces of the participants in the parade as they see the reactions. And the slight feeling of let-down when it has passed, seemingly so quickly after the long wait.
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Gallery: dancing on the streets of Pyongyang
Only in North Korea, I thought, could you have a day of sightseeing like this! It was the country’s National Day, marking the 71st anniversary of the founding of the DPRK, and our itinerary for the day had been carefully planned to allow us to see how Pyongyangites celebrated the occasion.
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The Palio della Balestra in Gubbio: a centuries-old tradition
Gubbio took a little while to weave its spell on me. When I first started to explore it seemed simply an old and attractive Italian town perched invitingly on a hillside, like so many others. Then I attended the Palio, the festival of the crossbow fighters, a centuries-old tradition.
