Las Fallas Festival

   While staying with Diane and Mick I decided to spend my days off in Valencia, which is only an hour or two away by coach. I was trying to plan my trip to Valencia to be there during the burning of the Fallas on the last day of the festival but unfortunately most of the hostels were booked up already. So I settled for going during the beginning days of the festival and it was just as fun!

   The first day I arrived, I jumped on the city bus to my hostel and all of a sudden there were these giant explosions!! No one on the bus even seemed to notice it. I definitely jumped and then thought there must be construction somewhere close by. Then, a few blocks later, the explosions were even louder and they kept following the bus through the city! For a moment I thought people should be worried until I put two and two together and realized if was fire crackers from the festival. Might I add, Valencian firecrackers are probably louder then most Canadian firecrackers. If I hadn't known better I would have thought I was in some hostile environment and part of the city was under attack. There were even small children of only a few years old playing with real fire crackers! It was insane. Not to mention the kids seemed to find it funny to toss the crackers at crowds of people walking by to make them jump. However, nothing compared to the Mascleta that happened everyday at 2pm. The whole city square would fill with exploding gun powder and fire crackers and create this intense pounding sound radiating through the city  streets, through your feet, and into your heart. At one point it became so intense it sounded like the buildings were shaking. I've never heard anything like that before!

   Another fun-though-my-Canadian-mind-tells-me-dangerous thing I saw was in the plazas at night. People would throw the fire crackers at crowds of people mingling before heading into the clubs but these were crazy fire crackers. The kind that fly around in circles and move hundreds of feet across open spaces while spitting out little sparkly balls of fire before exploding with a loud BANG! The whole crowd would all of a sudden start running at full speed as far from the flying cracker as possible until it finally exploded. Then everyone would come back and 5 minutes later it would happen again. Me and the girls from the hostel were clinging to each other for dear life while the guys were all getting a good laugh out of it. As scary as it was to be engulfed in sparkly balls of fire and sprinting for our lives, when it was all over we would burst into laughter and slowly start to edge our way back to the middle. It was such a fun adrenaline rush! I would do it all over again!

  On the second day, Vartan and I went to a bull fight. We bought some scalped tickets for cheap outside of the ring and decided to go. It was pretty gruesome. I won't go into it much on here but I will eventually post videos on my Flickr if anyone is interested.

   I met some really great people at my hostel and else where in Valencia. I am so glad we were all able to cross paths because it made my stay just that much better! There are so many great memories from those few days!

 Bastian, Jon, Vartan, and I at the hostel.

 Drinking orxata or orchata depending where you are.

 This whole street was canopied in lights. It was stunning!!

 One of the Fallas. You can see it in another photo on my Flickr the next day. It was about twice the height.

 Another Fallas.

We were all from different hostels and were supposed to go on the walking tour but weren't informed it was cancelled. So we made our own walking tour.