Budapest Spring Fest If you love Western classical music, ballet and jazz, Budapest is the place to be mid-March. From a guest performance of the Tokyo Chamber Opera Theatre to an evening with the Hungarian National Philharmonic, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart with Hungarian-Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski, the Budapest Spring Festival is the choice for jet-setting culture and music lovers. So popular is this event that tickets are sold out well in advance. If you don't make it in time, you will have to settle for admiring building fau00e7ades instead of the listening to the music played inside. Where: Budapest, Hungary When: March 19 For: 14 days <img height="382" alt="" src="/imagedata/2010/feb/carnival.jpg" width="400" border="5" /> Mardi Grasu00a0 French for "Fat Tuesday" Mardi Gras is simply the culmination of a whirl of parades, parties, bohemian street revels and secret masked balls. The city is famous for its live music, the best jazz, R&amp;B, funk and wild brass bands you'll ever dance to. The "unofficial carnival" has shindigs thrown by "alternative" krewes, spontaneous carousing in the narrow old streets of the French Quarter and the neighbouring Faubourg Marigny. The crowds are plentiful, 700,000 visitors up from various parts of the world and you are likely to get an eyeful of things you didn't think were allowed in public. Where: New Orleans, Louisiana, US When: Mid February For: 6 weeks Chinese Spring Fest Hong Kong is the best place to welcome the Chinese Lunar New Year or Spring Festival. The year 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, and roaring in the three-day celebrations are lion dances accompanied by booming percussion, firecrackers, skyscrapers bedecked in neon and one of the world's biggest fireworks displays, launched from barges in Victoria Harbour. Shops go crazy before the fest in a massive clearout sale that only adds to the rising fever. Down buckets of dried Oyster Stew and Fat Choi, a black seaweed that is Chinese for "prosperity". Where: Hong Kong When: Mid February For: 3 days Rio Carnival Rio de Janeiro hosts the world's best party. Period. The Rio Carnival is the wildest carnival of them all. More than 700,000 visitors turn up from different world quarters. Attend indoor balls (which run all night long) or journey to the Sambu00f3dromo to view the spectacular parades of the escolas de samba ("samba schools"), each featuring 300 drummers and percussionists, huge floats, and a few thousand barely-costumed dancers. Beware. It has the largest gathering of transvestites in the world, (in)famous for its "I-went-to-bed-with-a-woman-and-woke-up-with-a-man" incidents. Where: Rio de Janeiro in Brazil When: Mid February For: 4 days

4 of the best spring parties on earth

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4 of the best spring parties on earth

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