Category: Valencia

Burriana / Strolling / Valencia

Mom visits our Mediterranean home

In addition to our trip to Tarragona, mom’s early summer visit included plenty of beach time, trips into the city, and paella. Mom accompanied Dreamer to the nearby city of Vila-real to discount shop at the local football club’s end-of-season sale. After buying a bright yellow scarf, the ladies casually strolled through downtown, where they came across an 18th-century villa with some special inhabitants. Dreamer was thrilled to discover four gigantes, or giant people, in the courtyard of the villa. Built by the family of the man who introduced and promoted the cultivation of mandarin oranges in the region, the Casa

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Burriana / Castellón / Museums / Valencia

Valencian Community: sights unseen

We traveled quite a bit our first year in Spain, but sometimes it was relaxing to spend a weekend at home. After returning from a long week and a half traveling to the Netherlands and to Tenerife for spring break, we started the last weekend of April with lunch in nearby Castellón de la Plana before making our way to the city’s fine arts museum when it reopened after the afternoon descanso. At some point during our visit, we discovered Dreamer had become a friolera, the local word for someone who is sensitive to cold. This room was maybe 60°F. There was art

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Burriana / Holidays / Valencia

Flowered crosses and modern art in May

A little more than a month after Fallas transformed our town, the local groups who created the giant papier-mâché monuments that were burned at the end of that festival got their creative juices flowing once more – this time to construct giant monuments made of flowers. Valencians, it appears, are really into ephemeral art. Technically, the monuments were supposed to feature crosses, as Burriana – like much of Spain – was celebrating the Cruces de Mayo (Crosses of May) festival the first weekend of that month. As we came to see, however, the cross concept proved a very loose jumping off point. Since the

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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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