Month: April 2017

Las Fallas / Tourism / Valencia

Ninot takes a break: Valencia walking tour

We spent a very long, fun-filled day taking part in the Fallas in Valencia last month, and we will tell you more about that next time (finally… we promise!). Although the festival really does overtake the city, we still managed to have a few non-Fallas experiences while we were there for a very long day. For example, not all of the street performers we saw were dressed in traditional costumes – some were quite unique. Dreamer gave this guy a shiny nickel. Because we’ve enjoyed the experience so much in other cities, we decided to go on a free walking tour. And wouldn’t

Continue reading
Burriana / Las Fallas / Strolling

Finding Ninot: All aboard the Burriana Fallas Train!

Choo, choo! The fallas train is about to depart and take you all around our town’s different displays! Our small city featured a surprising number of fallas during their namesake festival this March. Yes, there was a real “train” that drove through the streets, taking passengers past each one. And yes, we did wait in line for an hour and a half to ride it. Before we get to the train, let’s take a look at what got us to this point: fallas, you’ll remember, are grand artistic monuments constructed in different cities and towns around the Valencian Community and displayed during the weeklong celebration, at the

Continue reading
Burriana / Restaurants

The Fallas are coming!

After visiting the quintessential Spanish city, we returned to Burriana with Dad and Deb to find a lot had changed, starting with the enormous falla that had materialized outside our apartment building during our four-day absence. We will finally get to the Fallas in our next several blog posts, we promise. While the festival did take up a lot of our time during Dad and Deb’s visit to the Valencian Community, we did manage to show them a few non-Fallas highlights in Burriana, so we wanted to get that out of the way here first. Although Burriana is a seaside community, we

Continue reading
Central Spain / Madrid / Tourism

Toledo: Strange, beautiful mix of cultures

As American spring break approached, Dreamer’s Dad and his wife, Deb, who are teachers, took advantage of this time off to come see us. We planned to meet them at the airport in Madrid and have a fun weekend in Toledo before returning to Valencia to see the start of Las Fallas, our region’s biggest holiday (more about that in coming posts!). We began this journey as many before it: with a commuter train into Valencia. Despite the tardy train, everything worked out fine. We made our high-speed train connection with some time to spare, which is good, because our train car was waaaaaay

Continue reading
Castellón / Tourism / Valencia

Where good Banjo Boys and Girls come from

We spent the first weekend of March doing some fun activities at home, too, and we managed to stayed just as busy as our previous weekend at home. This time around, we filled our days and nights with a quirky museum, a spa, a parade, rice, pyrotechnics, porcelain figurines, and horchata (sounds like a lot, but to be fair, our weekends are three days – yes, our life is rough).   Saturday: Spa, playing card museum, and a surprise parade Playing card games are quite possibly an even more popular pastime in Spain than in America, and that’s saying something because we

Continue reading
Castellón / Food / Holidays

¡Juega! Carnaval, truffles, and fútbol

Sometimes, that one weekend hits where you know you need to remain home because fun stuff is going on all around you. The last weekend of February was like this for us. Saturday: Carnaval in Vinaròs About an hour north of us in our province, Vinaròs is famed for having the best Brazilian-style Carnaval around. Since Lent was coming, we thought we should check it out. We arrived with a little bit of time before the parade and decided to check out the town. Needless to say, we did not leave disappointed. Once the parade began, it was a nonstop party. We

Continue reading