Now I shall talk about a festival I recently attended in Valencia called Las Fallas and the splendid fun I have been having with my friends in the continually beautiful weather.
1st las Fallas:
On tuesday at 8:30 in the morning 5 buses filled with international and spanish students took off for Valencia, a city 2 hours away up the coast. It was going to be a long 17 hour day.....
I got to hang out with a group of Americans from my program here at the University of Alicante, most of them I knew but I hadn't actually spent time with them. We arrived at 11:30 and set off through the unbelievably crowded city; more than a million people come to Valencia for the festival. At one point we were in a crowd flowing like an ocean current that you couldn't fight. We had to hold onto each other in a train so we wouldn't get lost. But we spent most of the day walking around visiting the many Fallas that are scattered about the city. So you are probably wondering what a falla is. Well the best way to understand it by looking at the pictures below, but essentially it is an artistic monument/sculpture made out of cardboard and paper måché filled with firecrackers and a wooden skeleton. They have a cartoon quality and are often a satire or critique of society or individuals that have been prominent in the last year. Each falla can cost between €6,000 and €600,000 and then in celebration of Spring and the birth of new things, they burn these incredible structures at 12:00 and 1:00 am to symbolize getting rid of the bad/old things of the past year. The celebration has a New Years quality to it, including fireworks and possibly the consumption of alcohol.....but you didn't hear it from me.
The weather was fantastic and the company was great! I got to run into my French friends Vincent and Ianis not once but twice completely on accident, it was great fun! I even got to feel/smell/taste a bit of home when we went to the Starbucks they have in Valencia. Toward the early evening when my feet were telling me to fall down and die I truly appreciated the big comfy arm chairs provided by my fellow Seattleite company. We also got to eat some delicious fried food at one of the many stands of the street market, these things called buñuelos made from pumpkin batter, they were absolutely mouth-watering. We also had some creme-filled wondrous pastries called rellenos and of course the classic churros were available for those who enjoy the disgusting substance known as chocolate, because of course in Spain you can't eat churros without chocolate...its sacrilegious. After messing about the city we finally plopped a squat at a plaza with a falla and waited for 12. There were hundreds of people gathered around, and each falla in the city had it's own similar following. The music played and then the firecrackers lit on a rope leading to the cardboard structure and then all of the firecrackers within the structure went off and the whole thing burst into flame...it was incredible. The heat coming off it was intense and of course there were firemen at the ready. Then we waited for an hour in la Plaza del Ayuntamiento for the 1:00am spectacular show of fireworks and the burning of the last falla. It was incredible, words won't be able to describe it. Hope the pictures help.
Me and una falla (for scale)
The award winning falla, Aladdin theme
Vincent, me and Ianis
Buñuelos being fried...yummy!
Falla being burned
Me and Pedro walking through the street market
Plaza del Ayundamiento
The final falla being burned and fireworks light the sky
2nd thing is a fantastic beach day with the girls. The pictures are enough to describe the fun we had. All I will say is that I finally fulfilled my yearning desire for salt-water swimming....hmmmmm soooo wonderful! Not warm yet but the Puget Sound has taught me to be tough.
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