La Fête du Citron Underway in France
Road Trips Foodies who want to catch this year’s edition of La Fête du Citron had better hurry. It’s well underway and set to end March 3, 2019, in Menton, France (a small town on the French Riviera).
The festival celebrating the local citrus crop (mostly lemons and oranges) has been going since 1928. This year’s theme is Des Mondes Fantastiques (“fantastic worlds”).
Gardens of Lights include sculptures of citrus. Dancers and musicians perform. Still, the most fun are, of course, the parades (three Golden Fruit parades — one each Sunday of the festival, plus nighttime parades on two Thursdays) in which the floats are crafted from oranges and lemons bolstered by wire cages (did you know it takes 45 kg of oranges or 30 kg lemons to cover one square meter?). The scent? Divine! Some 140 tons of citrus are used to construct the displays — and it’s sold at a discount when the sculptures are dismantled at the end of the festival.
If you can’t make it this year, it’s not too early to begin planning to attend La Fête du Citron in 2020 (it attracts a crowd of close to 250,000).
