The craziness that was Las Fallas

This week we didn't have class on Friday cause it was Spain's father's day. Isn't that weird they take off school for father's day? I am not complaining though cause we got to go to Valencia for Las Fallas! So Friday morning I woke up at 5 in the morning in order to get ready and make it to the train station on the other side of the city by 7:20. The train ride was a little over 2 hours long, not bad. I went with Marcos, Sarah, Alex, Britta, Kristin (Britta's best friend who was in town visiting during ASU's spring break), and Michelle. Later on we met up with Eric and Zak. We got to Valencia at about 9:30 and started walking around looking at all of the Fallas (kind of like giant parade floats). They were ginormous! I was told that they take all year to build and paint. Apparently the painting is the majority of the time though because they go into such detail on them.

Here is Marcos and Sarah in front of the first Falla we saw. The theme of this one was art.

Look at all the detail they put into these. It is kind of sad though because all that work is just going to be destroyed in a matter of minutes.

Look Kleenex is an internationally known brand apparently.

Haha Mona Lisa with a Visa.

LO

VE

:)

Look how cute :)

This one is the main gigantic one. It is in the main plaza the Plaza de Ayuntamiento. As you can see it was as tall as the surrounding buildings!
I was funny cause they incorporated all of the normal shops you would find on the streets here in Spain.
They even had a chinese store and an once (the stands that sell the lotto tickets). Hilarious.

Bombers (aka Firefighters.)

This was all apart of the same huge falla in the plaza ayuntamiento. The detail and magnitude was incredible.

An awesome spiral churro.

This guy was awesome. I don't know how he did this. He made them into little doughnuts, but I couldn't figure out how he got the hole in the middle of them.

The entire 22 hours we were there this is what the streets looked like. Packed! It was like coming out of a baseball game, but it never ended. It made me nervous how many people were there so I made sure to carry my backpack in front of me and I had locks on it so I knew no one could steal anything from me.
In the Plaza de Virgens they had an ENORMOUS statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, that was made entirely out of flowers! That plaza smelled so good :) There were flowers everywhere.

I was told that all of the women that participate and dress up in the parade bring a bouquet of flowers and put it on this wall. I don't know if that is true but I believed it.


Like I said there were a ridiculous number of flowers in this plaza. It was beautiful.
The point of Las Fallas is to celebrate the coming of spring, hence all of the flowers I suppose.

I wish we celebrated the coming of spring in the US like they do here.

Walking through the streets.

We started to take side streets so we could walk a little faster and not be so crowded. Thankfully we had been here before so I knew where we were going. I was definitely the official navigator of the trip because 1 I knew my way around the city and 2 I was the only sober one.

I know this is slightly inappropriate but I had to take a picture as evidence of how open Spain is with nudity and sexuality. It shocks me because there are definitely little kids who see this, but the parents don't really care. It is normal for Europe. I am glad the US isn't like that cause it is inappropriate and awkward.

I liked this float the best cause it was very western and it had cactus!

This guy was nasty looking.

We said this was Marcos cause he is Mexican and it was appropriate :)

This was sad cause it was so cute but it was broken. I was kind of happy it was broken though cause we could see what they were made of. It looked like to me that is was styrofoam and plaster. Doesn't seem like that is the best thing to burn for the ozone but oh well too late.

Again with the obvious nudity. Sorry

I was going to tag this on facebook an HP or something of the sort. :)

Lovely.

This was a beach themed falla.

Sorry after awhile of looking at the fallas and all the street vendors we went back to the Plaza de Ayuntamiento to watch one of many firework shows. There were people EVERYWHERE!

You can see in this video that they go mostly for loudness then for prettiness with the fireworks. Not sure why but it was intense. I could barely bring myself to take my hand off my ear to take this video, but I decided I had to.

Afterwards there was just a fog of smoke. You could barely see anything it was pretty cool.
After seeing the fireworks and walking around looking at all the Fallas and little street vendors we decided to pop a squat at this cafe right in la Plaza de Virgens. We had gotten paella from another place that didn't have tables and brought it here and ate. We knew weren't going to last too long sitting at a restaurants table while eating food from another place so we order two pitchers of agua de Valencia. That is a very deceiving name though because it is far from water. It is kind of like a mimosa except with lots of different kinds of alcohol and orange juice. I just had a small glass. It honestly wasn't that good, the taste of alcohol is just too over powering and kind of gross for my taste. Everyone else enjoyed it but said there wasn't enough alcohol in it. Kind of made me laugh that I didn't like it for the opposite reason.

Zak & Erin

Britta & Kristin

Me, Michelle, & Sarah

We ended up sitting here for a ridiculously long time, because we didn't really have anything to do and we knew we had a long day/night ahead of us. It was probably about 6 or 7 hours. No joke we were there forever. In that time we played mafia (awesome card game!!!) and chatted away. Another friend Eric met up with us after his host family drove out with him. He decided he was going to stay with us instead of go home early so a few of us walked to the train station with him so he could purchase a ticket. When we got back the group that was left behind had ordered a pizza from the cafe so that they could sit there even longer. Ha.

A little while later a parade came through and we had prime spots! It was a very slow parade they seriously moved SO slow it was strange. It was pretty neat though all the costumes and music and such.

Rolling timpani's I don't think I have ever seen this before. The bands were so frustrating though because they just casually walked they didn't step in time and they most definitely didn't step together! SO annoying, but that may just be the marching band geek inside me.
How these guys were dressed + their spears + the drums going made me think of Aladdin. I was waiting for them to start singing 'make way for prince Ali!'
It was funny though cause they were all marching and smoking cigars at the same time.

For all occasion and parades and such some of the women dress up in this very traditional attire. I don't know who is qualified to dress up and I don't know where this outfit originated, but it is very beautiful and pretty cool. I do have to admit though every time I see their hair like that is makes me think of princess Leia.

Spanish band geeks!

They have mostly woodwind instruments in the bands very strange cause normally you want more of a brass section.

Another Falla.

So this is quite the story....so we were told all of the fallas were going to start burning at midnight including the Virgin Mary made of flowers in the plaza de virgens so we went there around 11:45 and waited. It was not until 12:05 that we were told that they were not going to burn that (thank goodness cause I felt it was kind of terrible for us to sit there and watch baby Jesus and Mary burn). So in a panic thinking we were going to miss it all we go running to the first falla we came across in the Plaza de Reina. Thankfully that falla was in tact so we go and find a good viewing spot and sit down. After a little while starting getting bored wondering when they were going to take it....keep in mind they were supposed to start at midnight. Well 1:00 came around then 1:15, 1:30.......1:45. At this point we start getting frustrated cause can see and hear fireworks going off at all the other fallas including the main one in the plaza de ayuntamiento! But we didn't want to leave this one cause knowing our luck we would walk away and it would go off and we wouldn't be able to see any fallas burning. So 2:00 came around and they start doing stuff with the falla and we all got super excited but nope 2:15 came around, still nothing and the FINALLY at 2:30 we were able to witness the famous burning of the fallas!!!!!!!

During all of our waiting we were tired, cold, and extremely bored so we were trying to come up with different things to entertain ourselves. Marcos and Sarah were playing a punching game where Marcos would say 'A' or 'B' and Sarah would have to hit the corresponding hand. It was hilarious cause she either had a super long delay or hit the wrong hand. So of course Michelle and I had to each take a turn too cause we thought we would be better. But sure enough we looked just as stupid.
We were all sitting on the curb at different times resting our poor tired feet.

There is Michelle taking a stab at it.

Britta covered herself with her scarf at one point and took a little nap. So Sarah and Alex wanted to take a picture with her.
Good ol' buddies. Oh by the way that ridiculous hat Marcos is wearing is a free hat that we all got that has the Amstel logo on it. Random. The girls took theirs off pretty quickly but the boys kept them all the way until the walk home.

More of Britta sleeping :)

Erin was the one who really went out. She was legit asleep for probably about an hour and a half.
Everyone the entire time we were there were setting off these stupid stupid little firecrackers. They are definitely not like the little poppers we used to get when we were younger. It amazed me because the little kids were setting these off. The shocking part is that you have to use a lighter to set it off and the parents were just letting their kids play with them like it was nothing. But while we were waiting their Britta got her hands on one and decided she had to set it off. I was terrified taking this video because I knew it was going to be loud but I couldn't cover both ears if I wanted to take video.

The entire time we were in Valencia I am super paranoid about all of the loud pops and booms not because I am scared of loud noises but because on the train ride in Sarah was telling us how you could go deaf and that a kid last year in our program couldn't hear for a month after this.

Finally the fireworks begin!!!!!

There was a rope wrapped around the falla that was set off by the fireworks. It was like a chain reaction, little crackers would go off one at a time around the rope and started to burn the falla.

Burn baby burn!!!

Haha I love Sarah's expression in this picture. You can hear me say in one of the videos how nice the fire felt. It seriously was worth the wait just for the warmth we got from it.

The fire fizzling down. There were fire fighters on hand with hoses to wet all the vegetation around the fire so nothing would burn and cause an unwanted fire.

So after all of this occurred we went and got some Chinese food at Wok to Walk then headed to the train station. At this point it was probably around 4:00 in the morning and our train wasn't scheduled to leave until 7:23 :( boo. Well when we got to the train station it was closed so we went down to the subway station and found a spot on the wall and crashed. It was nice cause it was warm, that was all I needed.

But at 5:00 we went up to the train station to sit in there so that there was no chance of us missing the train. I was pissed though cause it was FREEZING in there especially laying on the concrete floor. It was so hard to relax and take a little nap but don't worry it wasn't too hard.

When the train finally got there we all pilled in (it was a freakin' mad dash to the train because everyone wanted to get seats next to people they new). Luckily we were all able to sit near each other and we all fell asleep instantly. I am pretty sure the entire train was asleep actually. It made for a nice short trip though cause when I woke up we were in Alicante!!! We got back around 9:30 and by 10:15 I was in my bed asleep. I slept until 8:00 Saturday night, it was FAN-freakin'-TASTIC! Overall Las Fallas was a success, but I have to say if I were to do it all over again I would make sure to book a hostel so that I could go to sleep whenever I wanted.

This week is definitely crunch time for me. I have to finish up my Spanish class, finish my group project for my retail marketing class, and finalize all my spring break plans!!!! I have barely even been home this week I have been so busy with this stuff. It is going to be so worth it though cause I will be able to have a nice relaxing TOTALLY AWESOME spring break!!! SO EXCITED!