So basically, last wednesday night was just awesome. Brilliant people, brilliant memories. Chocolate y Churros in the early hours of the morning, then watching the sunrise as you wait for a cafe to open at 7am, then the bus journey home trying desperately not to fall asleep and miss your stop! Lush. AND to make everything just that little bit more exciting, we got free hats! Which is amazing. AND I tried guiness, and I liked it. Be proud! The other exciting thing which happened, was on the way down to the metro Felicia very cleverly managed to kick her shoe off, and narrowly missed hitting two or three people on the head! Funniest moment ever. Ever.
So that was Wednesday night and Thursday morning, which obviously meant Thursday was spent in bed, all day. Beautiful. I feasted on diet coke and chocolate :) Friday was looking to be another exhausting day, so I thought I should get my rest... and I was right!
We took the bus at midday to Valencia, planning to meet at the bus station 11am I set off proudly ten minutes early to catch my bus.. waited.. and waited.. then realised that it was Fathers Day+El Día de San Jose.. so a public holiday.. so a different bus timetable, oops. Thankfully I was only 30minutes late! And we were all there on time to catch the bus. Exciting. Sarah and I were on a different bus to the rest of the group (luckily for them!) we entertained ourselves by talking loudly, laughing and general ipod singing along! Classic. The bus ride was 4ish hours long, and then a half hour stop at a service station, thankfully.
When we finally got to Valencia we were sort of a bit disorientated, no idea where to go, however we did get free maps.. but they weren't much use! We decided to follow the crowd and we stumbled upon our first tastes of Las Fallas, which really were nothing at all compared to what we were going to experience later that day. All over the streets people were setting of fireworks, throwing Catherine Wheels up in the air, basically there was noise everywhere. It was crazy.
We decided to head in a different direction, towards a section of the city wall we'd spotted earlier. Along the way we bumped into way more fallas. Each time they seemed to be getting bigger and bigger! The amount of work that is obviously put into them is astonishing.. just to burn them to the ground. Why bother!? Later on we also stumbled across the winning Falla, which isn't burned, it's saved and put into a museum (although actually they do burn it, just save one little bit of it to put in the museum, I should've been able to work this out, the size of the building they'd need to keep one every year.....!).
So after a LOT of walking, and not much food, we decided (mmkay I nagged) to get some food. It was decided Paella should probably be the choice of food, since we were visiting it's home! So we found a cute little cafe, sat and watched the world go by, and munched on paella. yum.
After this it was getting a bit dark, so we set off in search of some possible fire. We found a small falla that had already been burnt, and just along the road was another one, that we were told would be burnt at 2130. We arrived at 2115 and thought brilliant, not long to wait. However in true Spanish fashion, things didn't get started properly until 2230ish! It was incredible though, I really wish I could explain it but I just can't do it justice. They poked holes in it then added explosives, poured fuel all over it, wrapped firecrackers around it. Quite exciting to watch really. And then they brought six big boxes infront of it (they appeared out of nowhere thinking about it....!) and the show was ready to start! They set off the impressive fireworks which signalled the start, and when the fireworks had stopped going off they lit the firecracker fuse. Wow. It went BANG. Like, really really really went bang. We'd been warned it was going to but honestly nothing could've prepared me for it! Amazing. Then a scurry back to get away from the incredible heat of the fire, (we were stood surprisingly close to it...) laughter, screams.. and we thought it was all over. But oh no, just as we were getting ready to go, thinking that was it now, there was another totally unexpected bang! Which made everyone jump all over again.... and that was just the small one!
Afterwards we went toilet hunting (okay again, in reality I nagged everyone that I needed the toilet, isn't it nice to know I'm still the same person?) and then just walked around for a bit longer. We saw a few more impressive fallas and then the hunt was on for the cheapest chocolate y churros! We never found the place we were looking for where we'd stopped earlier to watch, but there was really a LOT of options, although some places were ridiculously expensive... €6 for JUST the churros, no chocolate?!!
We then went to a big fallas, of a magician with various things surrounding him. I pretty much loved him, he was really awesome and scary looking! The build up to this was more or less the same as the smaller one but obviously on a bigger scale, and there were a lot more people milling around infront of the fences. Unfortunately after all the fireworks went off (although they were very impressive) this falla didn't seem to catch on fire as easily! But when it did, the smoke was black, very black, creating a totally eerie look around the magician, who was already creepy! Loved it. No surprise bangs this time though, but a very big and very hot fire!
After watching this we headed to another big falla just up the road.. however after waiting for over an hour (and Jeremy sat in a tree) we decided it was time to give up and leave. It was about 0230 and nothing seemed to be happening much. And it was freezing. We headed back to the bus station and remarkably they changed our bus tickets from the 0630 bus to the 0300 bus-no hastle and free of charge! Incredible.
The bus journey home was actually disgusting. I was too hot then too cold. Tired then wide awake. Hungry then thirsy. Awful! I was so happy when I got into my bed on Saturday morning... and just collapsed.. for about 36hours!
Anyway, was going to write about what I've done since then, but to be honest I wrote more than I thought I was going to then.. and I'm tired, and I want to get some reading done, and I need to sleep at a normal time tonight!
All you need to know, is the sun has been shining.
:)
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