Las Fallas

Las Fallas de Valencia eran genial!

Last Friday I went to Valencia just for the day and it was amazing! I left Madrid about 9am and got back to Madrid about noon on Saturday after staying up all night. What's a girl to do when there is a huge festival with people out all night and no hostel anyways?

The answer is this: stay out all night, watch things burn, and have a fantastic time!

I got there around 3pm on Friday after the bus left an hour late, had its mandatory hour break halfway through the trip, and four hours of driving.
I've never seen so many people out in my life. The only thing I can compare it to is the taste of Chicago on the 3rd of July before the fireworks in Chicago aka insane.

For those that don't know first let me explain what fallas are. It's this huge festival in honor of The Day of Saint Joseph. Artists and people in Valencia spend all year and tons of $$ building fallas which are gigantic paper mache and cardboard figures. Some were as tall as about 15 meters or 5 stories! They build these scenes surrounding a theme, this year the theme was the crisis in the world, and install them in the streets during the week leading up to this.

Every morning at 8am the people of Valencia are awakened by lots of noise (I did not get to experience this) such as firecrackers and drums and such I think. Then on March 19th (Dia de San Jose) at 2pm is la mescleta' which is a huge amount of noise. The noise of this whole celebration is unimaginable. I took videos just so i would be able to show people later. All day long people are setting off firecrackers in the street, there are musicians in the street, etc. It was so loud!

Then at midnight until about 2am they set las fallas on fire and burn them until there is nothing but ash! At 1am is la crema' which is the burning of the first place falla in the main square. I got to see this and I don't have words to describe how cool this was. First they set off fireworks directly over head. Not like in Chicago where they are set off over the lake or when they are set off further away normally in the states. The noise was unreal and so exciting! Then afterwards the ignited the first place falla and we watched it get engulfed in flames until there was nothing left. Then we walked away and saw another!

This was probably one of the coolest and most confusing things I've ever seen. I'm really glad I found a way to go last minute and buying my bus tickets from strangers at a random metro stop and paying in cash worked out in the end despite my apprehension of the shadiness of it all.