Adventuring Through Spain: Las Fallas, Valencia 2012

Fallas Lights!

Me and a Fallera

Another Falla

Una Falla

OFF TO VALENCIA

My roommates and I road-tripped to Valencia for the weekend, all 5 of us girls in Carolina’s baby Fiat; it was quite the adventure. Valencia is about 4 hours from Villaviciosa, so kind of like driving from home to Wilmington. Valencia is on the coast of Spain and such a beautiful city, they’ve recently “modernized” the city so the majority of the sites that we visited were new as of the past few years but it was all gorgeous! One of my roommates and I even visited the beach, we were there so we figured we might as well try to soak up some rays…it didn’t exactly work because it was cold, but at least we were on the beach! We all decided that we’re going back as soon as it’s warm enough!

At the beachhhh

Walking, walking, and walking.

Las Fallas is a festival that is held every year on March 19, El Dia del Padre, here in Spain. The “Falleros” or the people that build the fallas, spend an entire year building these grand structures. The fallas are incredible and have such detail in them; I was in complete and total awe when I saw my first one. The way my professor described them, I thought they were just going to be small wooden structures without color or anything but I was wrong. The falleros also set up magnificent light shows around the fallas and try to win prizes with their creations. We were lucky enough to watch some of the light show of the second place winner and it was truly amazing! Anyways, on Monday the 19^th, the Falleros burn down their fallas in celebration of the new life that the spring season brings. They spend an entire year building these beautiful creations just to watch it burn to the ground, it’s a beautiful and sad ceremony but then they get to start working on their falla for the next year.

Fireworks from the roof

The festival is pretty much a huge party in the streets, for the most part the streets of Valencia are completely shut down from mid February until this festival is over. If any of you have ever been to Speed Street during the summer in Charlotte, this is comparable, people party until the wee hours of the morning in the streets and there are concerts and tons of food and people everywhere! It was awesome!

Also every night at 1 am there is a huge firework show, we got to go on the roof of an apartment complex to watch them one night, that was really amazing; it made me excited for the 4th of July and hot-dogs. Haha.

The INCREDIBLE Da Vinci

After getting all excited about the Fallas festival we decided to be tourists and tour Valencia during our last day. We played outside of some new museums and then walked around the entire town. I wore my Jack Rogers sandals so, of course, my feet were killing me by the end but it was DEFINITELY worth it. We saw the coolest playground ever, it was huge and had SO many slides and tunnels! I had to restrain myself from running and spending the rest of the afternoon on it, my roommates have a hard time understanding that I'm still a kid at heart. We also got to see the first place falla, which was a Leonardo Da Vinci falla and definitely deserved to be #1, it was HUGE and had so much detail and tons of art work. I loved it! I was sad to leave Valencia because it was so beautiful and different from Madrid, but I'm excited to go back when it gets warmer and when there are less people.