Month: May 2017

Tourism

Local Woman overly excited she wore shirt of place she going to see

We had so much fun in Alicante last time, we figured we were due for a return trip to the southern Valencia province any weekend now. It’s an easy trip – just three and a half hours south by car or by train. Plus, Doer had wanted a salt boat since he’d seen one in the Sardine Museum in Murcia, but more on that in a bit. So, not even a week after the all-consuming Fallas festival had ended, and with visions of pink lakes, salt piles, and palm groves in our heads, we rented a car and headed down to Torrevieja.

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Castellón / Holidays

Magdalena and the case of the overlapping festivos

We experienced an overabundance of festivals in March when two regional celebrations converged in one nearly sleepless weekend (from which – at the end of May – we have yet to recover). Magdalena, the main festival in nearby Castellón de la Plana, known for its pilgrimage and its large monuments of light, began the last weekend of las Fallas.  Despite its proximity to us, we didn’t see much of la Magdalena – only stopping by for a couple of hours to watch a procession before heading home to see the bonfires marking the end of Fallas. Honestly, after a week full of Fallas parades, fireworks, and not enough sleep, we were

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Burriana / Las Fallas

Losing Ninot or: burn, falla, burn

And so, our Fallas coverage draws to a dramatic end. All of the parades, fireworks, and other events in our city and in the capital, Valencia, led up to this final moment in the life of any of the enormous monuments: the burning, also known as La Cremà (quema in Spanish). We came home to Burriana Sunday, March 19, after a brief visit to Castellón to see the Magdalena celebration, only to encounter a smoldering pile of rubble in the street where one of the children’s fallas had stood before we left town. And down the road, smoke in the sky indicated there was more

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Burriana / Las Fallas / Valencia

For foc’s sake: what is a mascletà?

Valencians love their fireworks. The community is Spain’s leading producer of fireworks, in fact. Rare is the night when we’re lying in bed and don’t hear some random pops or booms coming from another part of the city… or even right next door. We do live directly above a local falla, after all. For the Fallas celebration here, it should come as no surprise, then, that fireworks factor in heavily. Everyone participates, starting at a young age. A really young age. Because we don’t live in the capital city, we didn’t witness the daily wake-up call known as la Despertà, in which parades of people

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Las Fallas / Valencia

Finding Ninot: Valencia proper

If Burriana offers a more comfortable, familiar Fallas experience, then the capital city, Valencia, provides large-scale wonder. Dreamer’s first visit to Valencia during the festival week with Dad and Deb (poor Doer had to work!) revealed a city completely metamorphosed into a monument to celebration. Little mojito huts had sprung up out of nowhere. We did manage to find one area that wasn’t completely overtaken by Fallas: City of Arts and Sciences, the iconic cultural complex designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. Still, you couldn’t go far without running into a monument or a parade. When it was time for our visitors to return

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Burriana / Las Fallas / Valencia

Finding Ninot: Flowers and parades

Many parades accompany the Fallas celebration, both formal and impromptu. Sometimes it seems like you can’t go anywhere in the city of Valencia during Fallas week without running into a panoply of costumed marchers and musicians. Each individual march doesn’t always seem to be a big deal for the participants. Really, sometimes people just seem to be getting from Point A to Point B, like anyone using the road. There was no escaping it. The festive fanfare was never far away, and it frequently interrupted us during our Valencian walking tour, while we were trying to take a break from las Fallas.

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