It’s Raining Feathers in Piccadilly Circus!

What an amazing surprise!  2nd September, 2012, Kara’s birthday and we were en route from the Matilde musical to have dinner at the Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly Circus when we stumbled into the most fantastic open-air event imaginable – the grand finale of the Piccadilly Circus circus.

Apparently,  over a few days, 250 international circus artists including aerialists, high-wire trapeze artists, hula-hoopers, jugglers, stilt acrobats, BMX street dance, tightrope walkers, Chinese pole artists, contemporary clowns, musicians and a beat-boxer had transformed Regent Street and the surrounding area into a giant circus, entertaining the crowds with spectacular acrobatics as part of the London 2012 Festival.

The event culminated in the early Sunday evening with a giant floating angel and human angels descending on zip wires over Piccadilly Circus, and a massive shower of 1.5 tonnes of small white feathers floating from the sky. It took everyone completely by surprise.

It was awesome. We and others could not believe the spectacle that was happening around us – the sheer joy and surprise on the faces in the crowd was a sight to see. At the end, people were picking up handfuls of feathers and throwing them – or taking them home!

It was probably the best open-air entertainment that we have experienced for a long time and amazingly, it was all free!

Well done to London for allowing it – especially as there was probably some disruption to the traffic and the clearing up would have taken a long time, even though the cleaners were out immediately after the event so the feathers didn’t spread too far around London.

More open-air spectacles like this please.

(Some of the acrobats performed at the closing ceremony of the Paralympics and it was interesting to see them dropping white feathers, although nowhere near the quantity that fell on Piccadilly Circus)

Click on any image to see a larger version and the slideshow.