The best time to visit a place is when there’s an event or festival going on; it makes your stay a lot more fun and exciting!
Pasadena is a great place to visit, especially when there’s a city-wide event. The city holds several exciting events and festivities every year, but there are four that top the list. Check out the Pasadena travel guide below to help you plan your visit. Don’t miss these events the next time you travel to Pasadena.
Tournament of Roses
Every January 1, Pasadena takes center stage with the Tournament of Roses. Showcasing the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl, the Tournament celebrates flowers, sports and music like no other place on earth. Every year, preparations for the century-old event take about 80,000 hours of combined manpower. 935 volunteers of the Tournament of Roses Association work on everything from choosing the parade participants and directing the crowd, to giving presentations about the Tournament to different community groups. But more than just a grand parade and a football game, the Tournament of Roses is the country’s New Year Celebration and its greeting to the world on the first day of the year.
The Rose Bowl
In 1902, the Rose Bowl launched a host of college football legacies and since then has hosted 18 Heisman Trophy Winners, 32 national champions, featured consensus All-Americans and honored 98 college football legends by inducting them into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. Every January 1, following the Rose Parade, you can catch the top two college teams in the country battle it out for sports supremacy.
Pasadena Doo Dah Parade
The Pasadena Doo Dah Parade is one of the most fun and flamboyant parades in the city. Conceived by a bunch of friends and Peter Apanel, Ted Wright, and Charles "Skip" Finnell, the Doo Dah Parade began as a response to the traditional formality of the Rose Parade. In 1978, January 1 fell on a Sunday, and the Rose Parade is never held on a Sunday (In 1893, officials moved the parade to Monday, January 2 to avoid frightening horses tethered outside churches and disrupting worship services). The group decided to hold an alternate parade on January 1 that year. The Doo Dah Parade features many odd participants like The Shopping Cart Drill Team, The Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, The Men of Leisure Synchronized Nap Team, among others. Many groups join the Doo Dah parade as a fund raising effort for different charities. The Doo Dah Parade has since then spaned many similar parades.
Pasadena Chalk Festival
The Pasadena Chalk Festival is the biggest street painting festival in the world. This annual event draws about 600 artists from all over Southern California. About 25,000 sticks of pastel chalk will be used to create stunning murals on pavement the size of two city blocks. This public event, held at Paseo Colorado is free-of-charge. Witness spectacular artworks from every possible style be created in the course of a weekend. The best creations chosen by the participating artists will be awarded jetBlue round trip tickets plus other prizes from event sponsors.
