Fallaworks < figh-ya-works >

Yesterday's theme tune (replace “Amarillo” with “Almeria”).

And more apologies for the delayed update - we've struggled to get wifi!

Anf and I enjoyed a lovely three-course meal in the hotel (Port Feria) restaurant, with a bottle of rosado and slept like logs (almost woke up in the fireplace!). We woke more than ready for super squirrelling at breakfast.

Once my rucksack was full of sandwiches and croissants, we took Smiley into central Valencia and found ourselves smack bang in the heart of it all: Plaza de Toros (the bullring) to our left, pedestrians everywhere, the North train station across the way. Beautiful buildings but let’s try and pop the van somewhere safe and quiet first, shall us…?!

There were lots of police in town and we discovered, when we were seeking a hotel, that it’s currently the Valencia annual festival – “Las Fallas”. I always think the Spanish are great at celebrating anything and everything. The lengths people went to with their floats and parades for Semana Santa (Holy/Easter Week) in Andalusia blew me away all those years ago, I know they have San Juan in June (24^th?) where they have fires and fireworks on the beach, and then there’s other littler festivals, like the balcony flamenco festival I happened to experience by chance when I went to Pamplona a year or so ago.

If we didn’t know that there was a festival in town, we would have thought something serious was going down. There’d be loud, random bangs that echoed through the tall buildings around us and it turned out that firecrackers are how Valencia celebrates las Fallas.

Once Smiles was safely stowed on a side street, we took a gentle mooch towards the noise. There were groups of people pulling together huge, funky-looking statues and fireworks being let off in the middle of the street. I’d seen this kind of exhibition before (during Semana Santa), where teams of people come together to carry huge floats that they’ve worked on for months beforehand and this reminded me a lot of that. I‘m not sure Tony had seen anything like this before and he seemed quite impressed by the amount of work that went into these pieces of art – the design of it, the making of it, the painting of it, the constructing of it. The whole shebang. Kudos to the statue teams!

Kudos statue builders

Valencia!

<3

We carried on into town, passing large structures being assembled as we went. We agreed we’d push on and check out the fully assembled statues on our way back to the car. We found ourselves back next to the Plaza de Toros, this time on foot, and the streets were abuzz with people and excitement.

Gorilla also had a Transformer mate! All the stops pulled out!

I loved the feeling of being back in Spain – the sound of the loud, animated voices around us, happy, handsome children running around our ankles (genuinely no sarcasm in this) – and I was eager to share what I knew of the Spanish culture with Tony.

The unavoidable sound of a man’s voice shouting excitedly through a tannoy system came from within the Plaza de Toros. It filled the air and resonated around the buildings in the same way the Falla bangs were being amplified. Queues were forming next to the ticket booths behind us and there were colourful posters above the counters with schedules of the week’s activities. There was a price list, much like what you’d find in a theatre, with sunny-side seats being priced lower than those in the shade. I explained to Tony that each Spanish town tends to have a Plaza de Toros. That this is where bull fighting takes place, that the sport is still fairly divisive (I don’t think it’s half as commonplace as it used to be) and that, given that it was the festival in Valencia, I think the opportunity to put on a show was seized. We contemplated experiencing Spanish culture in its most authentic way by attending a show, but agreed it wasn’t for us. (The cheers and jeers we heard later on gave me goosebumps and nausea and Tony kept asking me why they’d do that/what they do with the bull afterwards.) I explained to Tony that toreadors (those that fight the bulls) are regarded as highly, if not higher, than royalty in Spain.

Moving to the next Spanish custom, we wove our way through the people (that’s right – “wove”) towards the churros vans that circled the train station exit. I asked Tony if he’d had churros before and he confirmed he hadn’t by asking what it was. With our 6 churros and cup of hot chocolate, we plonked down in the sun and dunked our fatty, greasy, sugary little delightful bottoms off!

 

Mmmm - churros!

We’d asked the lady at the hotel the night before about las Fallas (What is it? Why is it? Where is it?). She explained that there is a firework show each day at the ayuntamiento (town hall) at 2pm. We (I?) decided to get away from the crowds and try and get out of town with ol’ Smiler before the crowds hit the roads and we ended up getting stuck getting out of town. Again. (We’ve had a good run of it, getting stuck/lost when trying to get out of both Grenoble and Marseille – Munich didn’t seem to be so bad!)

I think Anf and I were both pretty sad to not experience las Fallas in all their glory, missing the main event, but I think we were really quite happy with the decision to make progress down to Almeria.

The road was long, windy, (it didn’t lead to your door), tunnelly, climby  and we got to the port at around 11pm last night.