Pensacola's Biggest Week of Fall Starts Wednesday: First City Lights, Then 200 Artists and the Greek Fest
More than a million holiday lights switch on downtown Wednesday at 5 p.m. By Friday, Seville Square holds one of the country's best-regarded art shows and the Greek Festival opens on Garden Street - all inside the Foo Foo Festival's closing days.
Pensacola's fall calendar saves its weight for this week. It starts Wednesday, November 4 at 5 p.m., when the Downtown Improvement Board, with the city's support, illuminates more than a million holiday lights downtown for First City Lights. Santa and the Grinch will be in front of the Museum of History, viewing spots run the length of the Palafox corridor, and Winterfest's mini-train circles Plaza Ferdinand from 5 to 8 p.m. - the night downtown turns, officially, toward the holidays.
Thursday opens the 42nd annual Frank Brown International Songwriters' Festival, running November 5 through 15 at venues along the Florida-Alabama Gulf Coast, where the public hears the stories behind the lyrics from the writers who wrote them. It lands inside the closing stretch of the Pensacola Foo Foo Festival, the 12-day arts and culture umbrella that runs through November 9 in its 13th year - with Ballet Pensacola's Carnival of the Animals closing its run with performances at 1 and 5:30 p.m. today and 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Clark Family Cultural Center on South Jefferson Street.
The weekend stacks three heavyweights on the same days. The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival runs 9 a.m. Friday, November 6 through Sunday, November 8 in Seville Square - a three-day juried show drawing more than 200 of the nation's best painters, potters, sculptors, jewelers and artisans, with live music, heritage artists, a Children's Arts Festival, a student art show and a food court, all free. A few blocks west, the Pensacola Greek Festival runs 11 a.m. Friday through Sunday at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 1720 West Garden Street - more than 65 years of homemade food, music, folk dancing and tradition. And over it all, literally, the Blue Angels fly their homecoming at 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Pick your days now; by Friday, the whole city is spoken for.
