Ah, Spain...land of a million festivals. Or, so it seems. While I'm still on the fence about going to the running of the bulls this year in Pamplona, I knew I wanted to attend Las Fallas in Valencia. So, my friend and I hopped on a bus and made the four-hour trek from Madrid to sunny Valencia to witness the spectacle of La Crema (or, "the burning"). Las Fallas is an annual festival in Valencia that celebrates the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It revolves around hundreds of papier-mache statues that neighborhood groups spend months constructing and which usually have a satirical take on politics, famous sports figures and celebrities. This year, there were numerous Trump statues although my friend and I weren't able to find any of them due to our map that had no street names. The statues can be as big as 75 feet tall and the rumor this year was that there were over 250 of them to see. Leading up to the main event is a giant non-stop party that consists of a week of parades, fireworks and music before the final statue is burned. Some of the ones we saw during the day For all of you Stars Wars fans After a pit stop to finally have that agua de Valencia that eluded me on my first trip, we were off again to see more statues. They were amazing during the day, but at night, they were even more beautiful when lit up. I couldn't believe that they were made of papier-mache...they looked like they were so much more sturdier than that. This was my favorite, but I couldn't fit the whole thing into a single pic Las Fallas was amazing, but you definitely need to plan your route so that you can see as many statues as possible. I assumed they would all be centrally-located in the city center, but, in fact, they were very spread out, which led to us not being able to see many of them. Other than that, I loved it despite my irrational fear of fire and would say its something to see at least once. I did learn after the fact that Negan and Daryl from The Walking Dead (yes, I know they have real names...ha ha!) were there this year...had I known that I might have ditched the statues to try and find them instead! Next up, a recap of my day in the Catalan countryside eating calcots with Devour Tours...another bucket list item now checked off the list.
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Hola!I'm Becki...a part-time traveler and recovering expat back in the U.S. after two amazing years spent living in Spain. Archives
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