Pensacola's Festival Week: First City Lights Glow Wednesday, Then Arts and Greek Festivals Take the Weekend
Pensacola's biggest festival week of the fall stacks up in order: more than a million downtown holiday lights switch on Wednesday, November 4, and then Friday opens a three-day run for both the Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival in Seville Square and the Pensacola Greek Festival on Garden Street.
Downtown lights up first. At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4, the Downtown Improvement Board, with support from the city of Pensacola, will illuminate more than a million holiday lights along the Palafox corridor for the First City Lights Fest, according to the Pensacola News Journal's week-ahead guide. Santa and the Grinch will be in front of the Museum of History, and Winterfest's mini-train will circle Plaza Ferdinand from 5 to 8 p.m., with the downtown shops holding their Holiday Haul open house the same evening.
Friday, November 6 opens the doubleheader. The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival runs 9 a.m. Friday through Sunday, November 8 in Seville Square - a three-day juried art show drawing more than 200 of the nation's painters, potters, sculptors, jewelers, graphic artists and other artisans, with live musicians, heritage artists, a Children's Arts Festival, a Student Art Show and a food court, and admission 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 - a Pensacola tradition for more than 65 years, built on homemade Greek dishes, music, folk dancing and tradition.
The weekend sits inside the still-running Foo Foo Festival (October 29 through November 9), whose Night Moves Music Fest continues through November 8, and shares Friday and Saturday with the Blue Angels Homecoming Air Show at NAS Pensacola. Between the lights, the tents, the church kitchen and the jets, the guide's message is simple: this is the week Pensacola's fall calendar peaks, and most of it is free.
