The Cape Town IMAGINE-nation carnival took place this weekend and it was one of the highlights of 2014. Our editor takes us through some of the moments we missed out on if you weren't at the festival.

As a Joburger, I generally take pride in the amount of buzz and activity that my city is able to generate. It's quite rare that an international artist comes down and doesn't perform in our landlocked city. We may not have a beach, but we make up for it with a vibrant urban culture where we're usually too busy to be bored- and certainly way too busy to care about what other cities are doing. Every now and then, though, something happens in, say, the mother city that is big enough for the Joburger to cast an envious eye towards our Cape Townian friends. This weekend was one such occasion as the Cape Town Carnival took place. 

The festival was bright, colorful, imaginative (IMAGINE-nation was the theme, after all) and simply breath taking. It's one of the few events in the calendar year that we as Joburgers look at and genuinely wish we could be able to attend. Just so I’m not alone in wallowing in the misery of what was a pretty uneventful weekend; let’s take you through a list of some of the most exciting things we missed out on at the Cape Town Carnival this past weekend. 

FLOATS!

No, not the floats you order at Spur or Wimpy. Like any carnival/festival, the Cape Town Carnival had some pretty amazing looking floats. This snake-eating-itself float was one of the more eye catching floats, but the rest were just as amazing. It felt like we had been transported to a completely different city. 

Colors

Yes, we know the ‘We are One’ colour festival is coming soon, and that festival is a literal explosion of colour. But that doesn’t take away from the colourful affair that was the Cape Town Carnival. From the traditional matching primary colours that were shown off in the traditional/African exhibitions, to the peachy and flirty tango colours in the samba sections of the Carnival; we were teased, entertained and enamoured by the colours on display (Even from a distance!) 

Some of the Hottest Celebs

Kuli Roberts, Mi Casa, Kia Johnson and loads more celebs were at the festival. Just reading the tweets has us feeling jealous.

Cape Town Carnival by MNET! Naaaaaaarce!

— Kuli Roberts (@kuliroberts) March 16, 2014

@CTCarnival @2000FMSA pic.twitter.com/4f4YRW71ct

— Kia Johnson (@KiaJohnson1) March 17, 2014

Hundreds of thousands of South Africans showing nothing but love and happiness

It’s events like the Cape Town Carnival that remind us how special the country we live in is. Over 100 000 people including families, couples, single people, old people, young folk, babies and pets all got together on Saturday afternoon to celebrate their roles as citizens in one of the most beautiful cities (And countries!) in the world. There is nothing that inspires patriotism than realising just how much we love each other as South Africans and how well things tend to work out when we work together. 

Well done to everybody involved in making the Cape Town Carnival one of the most successful events of the year so far. Every single Joburger will be suffering from a massive case of #FOMO this morning, including the writer of this article! Hats off to you Cape Townians.