Tourism

Double Dutch 1: Amsterdam

We came to Holland in the spring for the tulips. Isn’t that VEIRD??!? Of course, we crossed canals, we took in history, we visited a famously colorful district, and we sought out interesting food and drink. But we really did come for those tulips. Still, we were eager to return to the city after a honeymoon layover there almost four years ago – 18 hours wasn’t enough! But first… a trip to the Borriana/Les Alqueries train station in the strong midday sun. As with many trips before and after it, we celebrated our arrival at the Valencia airport and clearing security with a

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Barcelona / Tourism

Barcelona 3.2: Gettin’ Sagrada

During our third visit to Barcelona, we finally saw one of the most iconic symbols of the city: La Sagrada Familia. Although we also discovered the works of another master architect during our April trip, we just couldn’t let a visit go by without seeing something created by our favorite Catalan modernist, Antoni Gaudí. And boy, was it something – many people (probably most) consider La Sagrada Familia his unfinished masterpiece. Construction of La Sagrada Familia, or The Church of the Holy Family, began in 1882, and Gaudí took over the project a year later. Even though he was completely devoted to

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Barcelona / Tourism

Barcelona 3.1: Scaling the modernist Montaner

A flimsy pretense was all we needed to schedule a return trip to Barcelona for the first weekend of April. We’re game pretty much any time, but when Dreamer found out a friend was performing comedy there the coming Saturday evening, the decision was easy. Our first two trips of Barcelona were quite heavy on the works of Antoni Gaudí, the most famous person associated with Catalan Modernism. While we did devote some time to our favorite whimsical architect (which we’ll tell you all about in our next post), we also discovered another master, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who designed two modernist gems eventually designated

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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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