Mi Vida en Madrid: Las Fallas in Valencia

Let me first start out by saying that this day and a half event felt like a four day marathon. We woke up at around noon on Saturday and so began our adventure. My friend Matt Letcher and myself went over to the local grocery store to get some things. Namely food and wine. We Picked up 3 rolls of French bread, 3 packages of Salami, a loaf of sliced bread and a lot of cheap wine. There was a small group of 6 of us so we decided just to make sandwiches for everyone. The ended up being 9 salami sandwiches and 7 peanut butter sandwiches. To say the least, we were ready. We took the metro to our bus and we were on our way. The drive was not too bad, and we were there before we knew it. When we arrived, we had a bit of a walk to the city center and the main guy in charge of the group of about 100 people simply told us, meet back here at 4:15 am to leave back for Madrid. We didn't know where we were, nor how to get there once the festival was over. But on we went, and first got to the parade which we caught the end of. It was sweet. Tons of people lined both sides of the street where guys were swinging sparking wands, tons of fireworks, and women of 25 high stilts. It was impressive. Once the parade was over, we went to look for the floats. They were placed at most intersections within the city, so it was not that hard to miss a giant 20-50 foot high piece of artwork in the road. These floats were amazing. I am not entirely sure what they were made out of but the colors and design was awesome. Some had people and animals, some had cartooned looking people, many times animals were two put together. Like one where a bird head was on a horses body. The floats were amazing. While walking around, there were explosions of fireworks everywhere. We had to consciously watch where we walked because little kids were lighting them off everywhere. Now when I say little kids, I mean little. Like 5 year olds all had their own little lighters and would go to mommy or daddy to get more firecrackers, smoke bombs, and bottle rockets. This was something we were all a bit confused about, but pretty soon, we joined in the fun when Letcher found a box of firecrackers. We then were running around the streets lighting and throwing little firecrackers. It made for a fun time. After the firework fun, we were ready for the fires. The first one lit off and it was just a little one. About 20 foot high flames, very impressive and hot. We all were trying to imagine what the 50 foot high floats would even be like. None of us could really. Eventually we run into a massive float. We soon found out that it was the 2nd place prize winner which is very impressive because there were hundreds of them around the city. The way it works is people from each individual intersection pool in money and pay an artist to make the float for that intersection. So from my understanding, the more money, the bigger and better the float. There are judges and they pick the best ones. However, they burn them ALL except the first place prize winner. This means that the one we were at, the second place winner, was most likely the best one to watch burn. It was amazing. At about 11 they began preparing the float with a spiderweb of stringed together fireworks. This essentially would light the float and get the fire started. When they finally lit the float, it was almost like it's own little show. Beginning with a series of about 40 quick yet loud explosions all up and around the float, the show began. There were sparking fireworks, on the ground, on the float, and huge fireworks that lit up the entire sky above the float. It was truly a sight to behold. The fire was massive, it was hot, and all of our faces felt as though they were going to burn off. One the fire died down, we all eventually made it back to the buses, even though originally we had no idea where it was. However, the buses ended up being about 2 hours late so we were all standing in the middle of Valencia, with no where to go because it was 5 in the morning and just wanting to fall asleep on the bus and be in our beds. Overall, this was truly an experience I will never forget. The city of Valencia is very cool and I wish I would go back for a weekend. Next stop is Alicante for a long and relaxing weekend on the beach.

Sandwich mountain for the day.