Jas has traveled to Valencia, Spain 5 times in the last 11 months for work and this last trip coincided with a huge local festival called
Fallas so ... I went, too! It. Was. Crazy. Fireworks 24 hours a day, marching bands blocking traffic, tons and tons and TONS of people, and these giant paper mache structures on every street corner. Oh, and at the end of the festival, they light the giant sculptures on fire. WHAT? The pictures might do it justice ... we have some videos, too. Stay tuned for those (yeah right -- when was the last time I posted a video?).
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| We rented bikes one day and adventured all over the City of Arts and Sciences. Berklee College of Music has a satellite campus across the water here. |
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| We rode all the way down to the beach for lunch but I forgot to take any photos there. Valencia is GORGEOUS. And it was like 70 degrees and perfect the whole weekend. |
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| Each neighborhood hires and artist to design the neighborhood's Fallas monument. The small ones are like 8 feet tall and the big ones are several stories high. They are these crazy cartoonish things that are sometimes political, sometimes humorous -- there is just no describing them. They're beautiful. |
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| We met Jas' coworker for the mascleta (afternoon fireworks). It was SO CROWDED. I've never seen so many people in one place in my life. |
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| Philipe was asked twice by strangers if he was the guy from the Hangover. |
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| Oh, the fireworks were LOUD. |
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| Each neighborhood also has several hundred Falleras that process through the city. |
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| Jas' boss and his wife invited us to join them for her neighborhood's procession to the Offrenda, a religious offering of flowers to the Virgin at the cathedral. It was something we as tourists would NEVER have seen in such intimacy if we were on our own and was definitely my favorite part of the weekend. |
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| There were kids setting off fireworks everywhere all day. And not just kids ... |
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| We went back to the cathedral the next day to see the finished product. |
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| Fireworks! At 1am. WHAT?!? |
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| This is the "small" Fallas for the kids that they burned at 10pm. |
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| First they doused it with gasoline, then they set off a string of firecrackers, then it went up in flames ... and then they danced around and over it. |
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| Churros and hot chocolate (warm chocolate pudding)? Yes please! |
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| This is one of the big ones that went up in flames at 11pm. The fire department was there to water down the buildings near it. |
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| Jas took a few days off of work so we could vacation together but he took me in to meet his coworkers -- and they just had to squeeze in a game of fooseball. :o) |
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